


Break the World

by KatyTheInspiredWorkaholic



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Character Death Fix-It, F/F, F/M, Happy Ending, M/M, Post-Season/Series 05 AU, Spoilers all the way through 4x13, Suicide, Trigger Warnings, and mayakovsky adventures because you know you've missed him, angsty feels, bad language, everyone gets a story arc, explicitly for 4x13, hedgewitch united nations, it's a big part of the plot just so you're warned, library reformation and secrets, probably way more plot than is necessary, queliot centric (ngl), suicide ideation, this is my self care fic, underworld rescue mission, which is why this is so long
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-18
Updated: 2019-11-25
Packaged: 2020-03-07 04:44:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 9
Words: 151,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18865978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KatyTheInspiredWorkaholic/pseuds/KatyTheInspiredWorkaholic
Summary: Season 5 AU, complete with 13 episodes. (The tags give a lot away)When it feels like all your life something bigger than yourself has been pulling your strings for you, sometimes one needs to step back and think that there's a reason."Maybe there was still some hope, somewhere, in the vast amount of worlds out there. In the magic of Fillory.Otherwise, what else was it all for?"





	1. Episode 501

**Author's Note:**

> This is my self care fic, and it is going to be _long_. I am literally writing it like it is season 5 and I'm watching it unfold; complete with multiple and repetitive scene changes, various story arcs, and a whole shit load of pop culture/Lev Grossman novel refrences. I do my best to try and keep everything well organized, and I think I did an okay job? It stays linear for most of the fic, but this chapter does have two flashbacks - because we were robbed of them in 4x13 and they are important to me. I don't usually fo flashbacks so it won't be a habit. And while I do consider this a breed of fix it fic, I should probably note that I didn't change one single thing from the finale. It was kind of out of spite, at first, "this is what you gave us watch me break it down to the molecular level and use it to grow something great" but in the end it also helped keep me in line so - just so you know. 
> 
> I want to say I'll keep a regular schedule, my goal is every 2 weeks (because I'm going to guess the chapters will be 10-14k each every time) but don't hold me to it. RL decided to throw me a curve ball when I started this, but I don't want to let these ideas go to waste so I shall get them here. I will also do my utmost best to get all 13 episodes/chapters of this fic up and posted before season 5 actually airs. This is for me to work out some feelings I have, so I can prepare myself for what the writers are actually going to do.
> 
> Warnings for the fic/chapter: Quentin's "ambiguous" suicide, suicide ideations, and the various points of view and stereotypes that surround suicide (both personally and in psychology) come in to play quite a few times this fic. One of my big bullet points here was I was not going to push aside the suicide, it's actually an integral plot point for at least the first half of the fic (I haven't finished some story arcs so I can't say how long it goes) but I want to make it clear that it's there. It's real. It's detailed. Please take care of yourself and don't expose yourself to something that could harm you, that is the last thing I want.  
> 2nd warning there's a lot of grief in this chapter and the next couple. I refuse to let Eliot or anyone else drown in grief for an entire season, but it does still need to happen so that's there as well. I write angst usually, it's kind of my bread and butter. Everyone is not having a fun time at the beginning of this season.  
> There will be a happy ending. I promise that with all my heart.
> 
> My author notes won't be this long again I promise. Thank you for taking an interest in my fic, I am doing this without a beta (because I will not subject anyone to trying to edit this monster) so any and all mistakes, typos, and inconsistencies are mine and mine alone. Please enjoy <3
> 
> \--  
> \--
> 
> “I have a theory that I’d like to air here, if I may. What is it that makes you a Magician? Is it because you are intelligent? Is it because you are brave or good? Is it because you are special?
> 
> A Magician is strong because he feels pain. He feels the difference between what the world is and what he would make of it. Or what did you think that stuff in your chest was? A Magician is strong because he hurts more than others. His wound is his strength.
> 
> Most people carry that pain around inside them their whole lives, until they kill the pain by other means, or until it kills them. But you, my friends, you found another way: a way to use the pain. To burn it as fuel, for light and warmth. You have learned to break the world that has tried to break you.”
> 
> \- Dean Fogg, The Magicians, _Lev Grossman_

\--

Break the World

\--

Episode 501:

The Journey Continues… Like a Drunk Russian Bear in a Bar

\--

_Fillory_

_-_

Whitespire castle lay just beyond the valley where Eliot Waugh and Margo Hanson met the travelers on the crossroads, mere farmers who told them briefly about the Dark King and revealed how long they had actually been gone from Fillory. Nevertheless, Eliot had them take the long way around the valley, along the Southern border. On what used to be an old merchant road that swept the countryside all the way to the coast in a gradual decline, and then followed the shore North where the ocean breeze near drowned any and all sensation of Fillory flanking them. It would take almost twice as long, but Eliot insisted. Not giving one single fuck that he needed a cane to walk the long journey. He told Margo it counted as prolonged physical therapy.

His body was healing slowly (ie: non magically) both from the trauma to his lower abdomen being punctured by a big fucking axe, as well as 3 solid months of sleep deprivation, dehydration, and malnutrition. As fun as this monster sounded; tequila, cheesy puffs, and Lucky Charms is not a balanced diet. His poor teeth looked so unnaturally white, from the castings used to fix his rotting molars, he refused to smile at anyone… no matter that he had next to nothing to smile about. Thank the universe for coffee and cigarette stains.

The Southern merchant road was in horrible disrepair, with missing cobblestones kicked up by thousands of magical hooves and potholes so long neglected they could swallow an entire wagon wheel. But it took them the long way round from a lot of places Eliot wanted to avoid. In particular: the province where he and Q had worked on the mosaic for 50 years, filled with places he still knew like the back of his hand, and all the farming land at the base of the castle - including the royal fruit orchards. Anything that even remotely smelled like peaches made him physically ill. He didn’t know if Margo understood why they needed to take the most indirect route to Whitespire, but he counted it as a blessing that she didn’t even ask and just pushed forward. One foot in front of the other. That’s the only way Eliot was going to keep moving, putting as much distance as he could between what happened and whatever was in front of him.

He couldn’t decide if that meant he was running away, like he always did, or if he was finally sticking with something that would be good for him. Fillory was his home. He and Margo had decided that long before he and Q made it in a lifetime. Sure it was a constant hot mess, but it was his and Margo’s hot mess, and cleaning it up seemed like the best distraction at the moment. Any idle time flirted dangerously with finally giving in to just falling apart at the seams. Eliot knew he’d never stop falling if he did.

He shook his head minutely, closing sleep smudged eyes as they continued towards the coast, and shaking that thought loose once more. It liked to wrap around his mind like strangler vines, dragging him back into the darker corners, and Eliot had spent more than enough time inside his own head the past few months. He barely slept now that his wounds were healed enough to warrant such abuse, a terrible combination of not wanting to close his eyes because he was afraid to wake up in his mind palace again, and because whenever he did he thought about Quentin Coldwater. His blood pressure couldn’t handle the way that stopped his heart at the worst of times.

“You still awake?” Margo asked, in her veiled-yet-caring tone that sounded snide to anyone who didn’t know her well enough to know better.

“So far,” Eliot responded, in his usual airy way. They were both so good at that, aloof personas that were as comfortable and reliable as a silk lounge robe. He even felt the beginnings of a smile quirk the side of his mouth as he opened his eyes to glance at the woman beside him, and it did slip out - just a little. See, easy as pie. “I should probably actually sleep tonight.”

“Hopefully in our castle,” Margo agreed, a small crease below her eyes relaying that she knew he was putting up his front - but she also knew it was a crutch that helped him stay upright and feel more like himself. She was giving him lots of leeway lately, and Eliot was painfully aware his number was coming up soon. They’d actually had to talk about things at some point. But for now the most self-destructive thing he was doing was staying up past his bedtime. She let the cover slide, again, but she wasn’t happy about it. The small smile slipped from Eliot’s face as well.

Not a mile later they took one last turn through the woods and saw the sea spread out before them. Sunlight glinting off it brightly, still an absurd amazon-prime box blue where it crashed to the shore in waves capped with pure white foam. Eliot had experience acid trips that weren’t as vibrant as Fillory. So ridiculous.

“What is it about you and that damn ocean?” Margo asked ahead of him, already making her way down the road without him. Eliot hadn’t even noticed he’d stopped, or that his face and shoulders had lost some of their tension staring out at the water.

“We bonded, Bambi, I’m a sea-faring man now. Or did you forget?” She gave him an unamused glance over her shoulder that meant she was one hundred percent amused, and this time the grin on his face - small as it was - was real and not so hard to hold. “I was thinking of Fillory, actually. In all it’s ridiculousness. Crayola water that looks like a... blue curacao martini with whipped cream on the rim.”

Margo wrinkled her nose. “That sounds gross.”

“I wouldn’t recommend it.”

“Speaking of drinks,” Margo said, pointing ahead at a ramshackle collection of buildings about half a mile down, with the glittering castle in the distance. “What’s the chance our bar is still standing? We could use some intel before we meet this Dark King dick.”

“Improbable. But I think we’ll manage,” Eliot assured her. “Two things that will never die in this world, my dear Bambi: pubs and gossip.”

“I thought it was water and graveyards.”

“That’s investments.”

“Right,” she drawled, taking his arm like he was escorting her down a steep incline in the road and not the other way around. “You and Costner.”

“We all have our vices,” Eliot didn’t take a jab back, too busy concentrating on where he was placing his feet and cane so his stomach didn’t rip itself open again. If he did, at least the centaurs would do a better job than the Brakebills infirmary. He made a note to go for a visit before any quests were undertaken. Because there would be quests. Eliot could feel it on the horizon, it practically burned beneath his skin, and his body might not be ready just yet but his mind certainly was. More than ready.

Anything to keep moving forward.

-

Lo and behold, their bar was _not_ still standing. But there was a brand new one (50 years young) just across the way that looked very similar on the inside. More humans than talking animals, it seemed, which was a point against them from the start. Humans were rude. Talking animals were courteous, for the most part, and had long memories. Margo had been holding out hope that one might remember the election of High King won by a landslide thanks to the animals, and would be willing to spill some more old tales and rumors. That was going to be the tough part. The commonwealth usually didn’t remember further back than a decade or two, and they needed intel from 300 years ago. Talking animals was her ace in the hole, and their only shot at not walking in blind to the castle, but the sole non-homosapien residents inside were a small family of beavers (with two tiny wood chipper children, who brings kids in a bar?), a road-weary goat, and a slim birch tree that looked very far from home sitting at the bar top.

“You take the old goat. I’ll take tall, white and striped?” Eliot offered, and Margo nodded in agreement. She knew he wasn’t back to his old self, and probably never would be, but Eliot had seemed a lot better the further they ventured into Fillory. She couldn’t help but keep her eye on him, usually the fairy eye, which saw colors refracted in brilliant arrays reflecting magic and auras alike. In Fillory it was amplified by a billion, which made the cloud of grief and guilt trailing after Eliot like thick smoke all the more apparent. It was black and blue and grey, like a fresh bruise. Somehow Margo didn’t doubt that Eliot could feel it just as well as she could see it.

Margo couldn’t quite convince herself that it looked lighter here because he was healing. It felt more like a trick of the light, or a side effect of opium-laced air. She frowned after him as Eliot limped to the bar and sat his tall frame down gingerly, as if his bones were made of glass.

“Fuck.” Turning on a sore heel, she made her way to the goat in the corner and flagged down the barmaid making the rounds. Hopefully their tequila substitute was still in circulation three centuries later. She’d need a whole bottle.

-

_The Library_

-

Zelda’s eyebrows rose high and startled when Alice Quinn walked through the door to her office, quickly followed by Sheila. It wasn’t that she had doubted the young librarian would manage to succeed in bringing Alice to a meeting with her - she just hadn’t expected them so soon. Usually Miss Quinn needed a heavy hand of convincing before she agreed to, well, anything that had to do with The Order.

“Alice-”

“I’ll do it,” Alice interrupted her before Zelda even managed to rise from her desk. Zelda’s head tilted to the side in scrutiny, and her gaze darted to Sheila without blinking.

“You already told her?”

“She asked,” Sheila said with her hands spread in defense. “I tried to be discreet about it.” The look on her face hid none of her amusement. They both knew Alice was too smart to be sweet talked so easily. The only reason she would be standing in Zelda’s office was if she had found her own purpose for doing so.

Zelda nodded in understanding, bobbing not unlike a bird, but slowly and more proper. “Well, as happy as I am to hear that, Alice - Miss Quinn - I can’t help but wonder what made you come to this decision.”

“Honestly, I don’t need to explain myself to you,” Alice told her with a hint of that old bite, remembering how it had not been so long ago she’d been a prisoner of the Library. “But if you must know, something happened. And I need to -” Zelda’s questioning head tilt returned, and Alice recalled, as well, that she had hidden all of her friends books when she had escaped. “Quentin is dead.” Zelda had the decency to look ashamed. “-of course you knew. You know about Everett so you must know Quentin died too. But he’s not just dead, he was incinerated by his own magic backfiring in the Mirror World. Everett had enough magic to contain the burst, when he cracked the mirror, but Quentin didn’t think-” Alice cut herself off, teeth clacking as she snapped her mouth shut into a thin line. Quentin never thought further than a step or two ahead, and never about consequences.

Especially if it was only him left in the path.

Alice’s gaze was so sharp it sliced through the silent space between her and Zelda. “He’s gone. Body and soul. Nothing left. Nothing to retrieve or bring back. And I… I need to be away. From everything. Everything about Brakebills, and New York, and even my mother’s house just reminds me of what happened and what I _can’t_ do to fix it. And - I’m so tired. Of being caught up in the crosshairs, from holding back and walking on eggshells at school, from not having a future I carved out for _me_ and by me.

“You once said that here, in the Library, I could find my full potential. I can experiment and stretch to the limits, find out what the limits even are.” Alice watched Zelda’s carefully guarded face the entire time she spoke, looking for any crack or spark or flicker of emotion to betray itself in her expression. “Well, now you can put up or shut up. I’m here. You want to give me a position where I don’t have any superiors, where I don’t have to be careful how people perceive me, where I can set up a system to organize all the knowledge in the known universe? Is that really what you are offering me?”

Zelda swallowed hard, thinking of the long list that was just presented, and although she felt a stray thread of doubt in her original assessment -  the determined look shining in Alice’s eyes also gave her an unbelievably lifting amount of hope. She nodded once, distinctly. “Yes.”

Alice didn’t even bother to ask why. She took three quick steps forward, so she was closer to the desk, and sat down in the plush armchair opposite Zelda. Never breaking stride or eye contact.

“Where do I sign?”

-

_Brakebills_

-

Magic was leaking from the walls. It pooled on the sidewalk like rain puddles, and clung to the grass with the morning dew. It was in every corner, dusting the library books (who were being _very_ uppity with the recent flux), and sparked from the fingertips of every Brakebills student. God forbid someone contract a minor case of static shock; one first year caught his dorm room on fire as a result that first week of the magic spike. No one outside of the Fillory circle knew the reason for so much ambient magic. But with the Library not recovering or even showing their faces, and all their meters short circuiting within hours until there was nothing left but broken boxes on the walls, everyone assumed it was more than broken pipes. That the rumor the Library had been hoarding magic had been true, and the hedges had actually taken down The Order for good. And good riddance.

Dean Fogg had his own theory that was much more plausible. All the magic that Everett had consumed from the Secret Sea had been released into the universe when he was destroyed. The metaphorical ocean had expanded, the ice caps had melted, and now everything was flooding. People who would never have had any kind of traces of magic were now appearing as bright spots on his many globes in his office, making the selection process even more rigorous. They couldn’t control or accept the volume, but they couldn’t risk one of these people actually figuring out a method to their magic and making it public.

It was also his reigning theory on why Julia Wicker had suddenly found her magic once more.

He told her so when she visited to sign up for classes that semester, deciding to start from the beginning. She knew all the hand exercises, could do Popper 1 through 42 in her sleep, but the tiny spark in her fingers only shot through her nerve endings when she focused on one thing. The loss of her best friend. Her heart could only take so much.

Clinging to the unofficial Brakebills moto that “magic comes from pain” Julia instead tried to expand her studies and focus on other kinds of pain. Pain driven from anger and resentment, like the loss of her goddess powers and her lack of say in that decision _at all_ ; or pain from past memories that she had gotten herself past with great strides of growth, only to be revisited painfully and uselessly in the end. Eventually she got so frustrated she attempted pain driven from actual physical stimuli - both Dean Fogg and Penny put a quick stop to that method - so all that was left was thinking of Quentin’s face. To hold his deck of cards that refused to burn in the memorial fire, and do her best not to cry while she was casting.

It was excruciating.

She wanted to relearn magic so _badly_ , but the constant reminder that Quentin was gone made it the most unendurable thing. According to Alice he was _gone_ , nothing but dust in the Mirror World, and that was more painful than anything. That not even in the underworld would she see him, once her frail human lifespan was over. No reuniting in the waystation, or wherever their final destinations took them. Nothing remained of him but pictures and memories, both which would fade in time, and it just wasn’t _fair._ None of it. Quentin didn’t deserve an ending like this, one where he didn’t even get peace. Her best friend didn’t deserve everyone just _giving up_ and moving on. He didn’t deserve to be remembered only in pain and grief. More than anything she didn’t want to only remember the bad, when there had been so much good - Quentin had been so good. He didn’t deserve any of it.

It didn’t take long for that train of thought to begin a fire burning in her chest, for her fingers to light up with small tendrils of lightning. Crackling and pulsing with her heartbeat. Her magic flowing and bubbling like a brook beneath her skin. Then she would sniff and breathe deep, wipe away tears on her sleeve, and cast whatever she was suppose to cast. All the while thinking, _I can’t keep doing this. There has to be another way to tap into the pain._

“Why are you doing that?”

Julida whipped around, standing in the middle of the practice field where they had held the bonfire for Q, and where all the students still did their more dangerous spell attempts. For Julia it was just hitting two birds with one stone.

By the border of trees that led towards the Physical Kids Cottage, Kady stood watching her with a strange yet slightly judgmental look on her face. Her expressions were always a kaleidoscope of emotions, having the uncanny ability to both criticize you and sympathize at the same time.

Julia wasn’t proud of the second loud sniff, her nose still running and tear tracks fresh on her face, but she looked Kady in the eye when she said, “Magic comes from pain, right? Apparently, I can only make it work when my heart breaks.”

Kady frowned, troubled, but nodded in understanding. Knowing exactly who Julia meant. “You haven’t found another option?”

“I’m open to suggestions,” Julia muttered, wiping off her face as best she could now that the magic had withered to nothing in her hands. Kady came to join her by the fire pit, staring at the empty ashridden remains.

“I can ask around? Maybe I can find something to help,” Kady said quiet and low, putting a hand on Julia’s shoulder in as comforting a gesture as she could in that moment. Julia didn’t need hugs, she needed answers. She needed to find a way to take control back of her own body, to stop torturing herself over the death of a friend. In that, Kady could intimately understand. She’d been there.

“Thanks,” Julia tried to smile up at the other woman, and managed to hold it for a split second. Progress.

"So other than," Kady made a gesture to the fire, Julia's hands, everything in general, "all of this, you managing alright?"

Julia just shook her head. "Kind of hard to move on when you're forced to keep reminding yourself of what happened. It's getting easier, but then I have to dig deeper to make my magic work." She sat down on one of the logs surrounding the firepit, rubbing her hands against the autumn cold. "I hate this," she whispered.

Kady sat next to her, not the best with comfort but knowing that just being there was probably better than nothing at all. She looked around as something occurred to her. "Where's Penny23?"

"I told him to leave."

Kady raised an eyebrow. "After all that?"

Julia’s smile was bitter. "I was too wrapped up in grief to see it. It took a while for me to realize that… no, I wasn't going to forgive him for what he did. To see that, no matter what, I always seem to get my choices taken away from me. I haven't had the chance to choose what I do with my body in years, it keeps getting ripped away. By Gods, by monsters, and now even by my friends.” She pushed her hands through her hair, sweeping it back behind her face and allowing her to breath deeper in the cold. To shake off the headspace she always needed to bring herself to when casting spells. It was morose and dampening, even without the cold. But Kady sitting next to her was a warm body that helped center her and ease her mind. An eye in the storm.

"Maybe I will forgive him, one day,” Julia continued. “But I need to find my footing on my own terms, and I can't do that with him hovering. A constant reminder of all that I've lost. So I told him I needed space. A lot of space."

"You kicked him out." Kady smirked.

"The cottage isn't mine, I can't really do that,” Julia pointed out. “But yes he moved out. I think he's still on campus, I just don't know where."

Kady shifted in her seat, pulling her coat closer against the cold. "Penny can take care of himself, always will - no matter the timeline. Let him figure out his own shit. He's done nothing but stay in your orbit, just like we all did with each other the past few years. We need to find our own lives. Our own stories." Julia looked at her, wounded and hurt, everything was still fresh to her. But Kady didn't flinch or back down. "I said it before, when we were working with that monster. I need my own path, and I've found a story that has me as the main character. Have you found yours?"

Julia swallowed and cleared her throat, chasing back the emotion that still bubbled up and threatened to burst like a geyser. "I think I'm still in the world building stage? I had a story, when I was a goddess, now I have to start from scratch." She shrugged sadly, it is what it is. "I'll get there, I have to, I just don't know how yet."

Kady paused, pondering something long and hard, before she leaned forward to catch Julia's eye once more. "You want to get out of here? I have something I want to show you."

"Your story?" Julia smiled weakly, half joking.

"Part of it. I think you might like it, and maybe we can find something to help you too."

Julia stared, not quite wanting to believe it but also too exhausted to care. She trusted Kady. She may have sent Penny away, but that didn't mean she didn't need a friend. Maybe Brakebills wasn't the place she was supposed to be.

"Sure. Why not." Julia smiled, still small and tired, but this time it came easier. Progress.

Kady took her hand and helped her to her feet, then led the way back to the Physical Kids Cottage, where a portal was already active and waiting in the living room mirror.

-

_Fillory_

-

Margo joined Eliot and the birch tree at the bartop after the old goat (and she did mean _old_ , he had a billion stories of his grandkids) hit the road back to wherever home was. Eliot was laughing one of his airy, entertainment laughs but not very well. It hurt to hear it was so fake, but the tree didn’t seem to notice. Just another sentient being fallen to Eliot Waugh’s charms. Margo kept her face carefully blank as she leaned on the bartop to press close to Eliot’s arm and take his elbow in a friendly gesture. More showmanship, just like the old days.

“You two are having fun,” she said in an overly nice tone, catching Eliot’s eye when he glanced at her. They didn’t even need a gesture or signal, nothing so obvious and middle school, just a shared look was enough to know that Eliot had definitely gotten some good dirt from the talking tree.

“So much. Margo, this is Farvel, he’s actually from the Northern side of the Talking Forest. They’ve become quite mobile the past century or so. Farvel, Margo.”

“An honor, your grace,” the tree said politely, bowing its tall, sparsely leaved head towards them and near knocking off a few glasses and bottles in the process. “Sorry! Sorry, I’ve been here a while. It’s been a troubling week.” The tree spoke through a cut in it’s thin trunk that merely looked like one of the dark stripes in it’s off-white bark. Margo could vaguely make out it’s eyes, knots in the bark that moved and blinked paper thin lids just as white. It was unsettling, to see something resembling a human face in the bark, like a child’s drawing. But Margo smiled sweetly at the tree and pretended to be immensely pleased at it’s courteous christening.

“Please, Margo is fine. I lost my crown to High King Fen centuries ago,” Margo said, aiming for amiable, but the way Eliot winced into his glass as he took a drink she missed the mark by a mile.

“Such sad times,” Farvel said with a somber shake of his head, also taking another draw from his mug - near empty again. “Always seems to be the case, doesn’t it.”

“Depressingly so,” Eliot added, cutting off the tree before it could launch into a lament. “Farvel was just telling me about what we missed all that time ago. He’d actually been there.”

“Still a sapling, but I was about 5 feet above the ground. Enough to have my ears to the wind.” The tree outright winked at them. Margo almost pulled a muscle resisting rolling her eyes.

“High King Fen and Josh the Fresh Prince were overthrown not two seasons after the Prince returned to Fillory from his quest to Earth. With his return came an abundance of magic like there hadn’t been witnessed since before the time of the beast. There were so many celebrations, between the humans and the animals for the most part, but the naiads and the trees were rejoicing in their own ways. Our forests grew tenfold, thriving in the magic rich ground and growing taller than ever.

But, too much of a good thing always seems to bring about destruction. The lack of magic may have caused the threat of wars with other human nations, but with its return more petty grievances resurfaced. The world is never going to be a utopia. Animals and humans long for conflict, it is a instinct as primal as predator and prey. When they aren’t fighting over necessities, they instead fight over things more personal. Beliefs and notions that aren’t shared, hierarchies and the infamous ‘food chain’ - if there ever was such a thing.”

“There is such a thing,” Eliot muttered softly into his cup so only Margo could hear, but the tree was so tipsy it didn’t even notice.

“War took place. The bunnies revolted, they couldn’t reach Earth or get word out to any of the corners of Fillory. It all happened very fast. There was a bloody battle at the gates of Whitespire, and it all looked so terrible… until he came. The Dark King.”

“Let me guess, he stopped the battle,” Margo said.

“In it’s tracks. It was astounding.” Margo caught Eliot’s eye again, and they looked away thinking the same thing. _Staged_. “The battle parted before him, and he retook the castle in one fell swoop. High King Fen and Josh the Fresh Prince were dethroned before the day was done. They may have graced Fillory with magic, but they cursed it with freedom. A kingdom must be ruled. Without it, chaos reigns instead - which leads to war and blood in the ground. Terrible for the roots.”

“So what happened to High King Fen and Josh?” Margo insisted, leaning in for emphasis. Eliot saved his glass from being knocked over in the motion, he was acting surprisingly sober.

“Well, no one _really_ knows,” Farvel told her. “There was word of them being executed, but the Dark King would have held a public beheading if they were - it’s a crowd pleaser. Some say they were imprisoned, but if they were they are probably long dead. Or I assume so, how long do you Earth-children age? You look very good for being over 300 years old.”

“I moisturize,” Margo dead-panned. “So no one knows for sure, but no one saw them killed. Okay, we can work with that.”

“300 years is a long time, Bambi,” Eliot told her carefully, saying it quiet enough and with a slight turn of his head that Farvel wouldn’t hear if he wasn’t paying close attention. Which he wasn’t, flagging down the bartender for another beer. Margo did the same. She needed more faux-tequila where this was heading.

“We’ve worked more with less,” she told him just as carefully, but her words had razor sharp edges meant to slice and maim. To end any further arguments. “Time isn’t a for sure thing here, they might still be alive.”

“You just need to be prepared if they aren’t,” Eliot said, taking another careful sip of his drink and not looking at her as he spoke. Margo got impatient and took Eliot’s drink as he placed it down, almost taking a sip herself before stopping.

“What is this?”

“Water.” Margo stared hard at Eliot until he rolled his eyes. “And a bit of lemon, I might have done a slight a hand form the market across the street.” He brandished his fingers on his right hand in a wave that moved every digit carefully. “I still got it, even after three months with no-”

“No vodka,” Margo interrupted, still staring unblinkingly.

“No,” El replied simply, taking the drink from her hands and bringing it back to his lips. “-I was thirsty.”

“El,” Margo warned him. She had watched Eliot drown himself in drugs and liquor after he had to kill Mike during their second year at Brakebills. Even personally dragged him back as far as he would go, until Fillory took over and did it’s best to mend the broken spaces in between all the shattered pieces that made up Eliot Waugh. Margo had been preparing herself for another round of the same treatment, even started mentally writing intervention speeches and ways to manage the debauchery as he processed Quentin’s…

To be honest, she hadn’t given herself much time to process Q’s death either. It hit too hard, and she had shit to do: keep Eliot’s head above water, find Josh and either slap him or fuck him (she hadn't decided yet, probably both), find Fen and make sure she has her shit together too. Her list was simple. But she didn’t know what to do with this. If Eliot wasn’t smothering his pain, or talking it out and processing it like a healthy human being (he’d never really been one, so that wasn’t as much of a disappointment), then he was just left feeling it. All of it. Unfiltered and raw.

She didn’t want to _encourage_ his drinking, but he couldn’t just sit there and suffer. This was almost worse.

“El, you need something.”

“No, I don’t,” he words were definite and hard as stone. All airy facade gone. “And neither do you,” he added, taking her drink from the bartender before she realized it was there. He gave it to Farvel and caught the bartender’s eye again. “Water for her too, and some water skins if you have them. For the road.” Margo knew she looked like her good eye was going to pop out of her head like her Fairy eye could. “You’ve had enough.”

“El, we need to talk about this.”

“We _really_ don’t,” Eliot almost laughed, but it sounded too dry. “We talked plenty when I woke up. You know everything you need to know.”

“I _promise_ you there’s more,” Margo insisted, finally sitting at a stool and looking Eliot straight on. “That wasn’t a talk, and we don’t have to do it here but we are going to talk about this. El, you’re scaring me.”

“I’m fine, Bambi.” Even with the soft smile that didn’t reach his eyes, the precise mask Eliot put up, Margo saw right through it. She didn’t need a fairy eye to see that. Though the dark clouds of black and blue that hung like fog around his head and shoulders didn’t help how her heart constricted in her chest. Eliot wasn’t fine. She couldn’t remember the last time he was.

_Eliot had woken up two days after they’d freed him from the monster. Professor Lipson was sure he’d woken once or twice before, too, but it would have been brief: probably looked around and realized he was in the infirmary and felt safe enough to sleep longer._

_But Margo was there when he woke fully that second day, sitting in the chair by the window with her arms crossed in a stance that looked defensive. She was really just trying to hold herself together, mind reeling as she thought about everything Alice had said to her that morning in the cottage. What had happened to Quentin, what Everett had done and what Q did to fix it. She could feel a bitter, burning mist cloud her eyes again as she cursed that stupid nerdy boy over and over again in her head for being so_ ** _stupid_** _and unabashedly brave._

_“Those tears better not be for me,” Eliot’s weak voice drifted through the silence and reached her with a seconds delay. She turned to him quick, not realizing there were indeed tears blooming and probably smudging her eyeliner. Eliot smiled at her, as reassuring as he could, unaware and still hazy from sleep. “You always did have a mean swing.”_

_“I’m so sorry, El,” Margo told him, coming to his side and taking his hand. Eliot’s smile was the most beautiful thing to see after the past few days, and that hurt more than words could say._

_“Shh, don’t be sorry. You saved me, my knight in shining armor.” Something sparked in Eliot’s eyes, and he shifted to look around the room, something coming to his mind. “Where is everyone?”_

_“At the cottage,” Margo told him, omitting_ **_getting ready_ ** _with a heavy lump in her throat._

_“So it’s over,” Eliot sighed, falling back to his pillow and looking so at peace Margo's chest hurt._

_She swallowed hard, squeezing Eliot’s hand too tight for comfort, “Eliot, something happened.” His full name caught his attention, and Margo had to watch panic cloud his eyes as the silence stretched between them. “In the mirror world, with Penny and Alice and Quen-”_

_“Where’s Quentin?” There was such determination in his face, a stage of denial that was ready to go rescue Q from wherever he was trapped. Because that’s the only thing that could have happened, right? He’s stuck, and they have to go get him._

_Margo pressed her lips together to keep them from trembling like the rest of her, and she gripped Eliot’s hand with both of hers to hold him to her. “Everett showed up, and tried to stop them by shattering the mirror. Q fixed it.” Eliot’s brain wasn’t on all cylinders yet, so he just kept staring at her in increasing panic. “You can’t do magic in the mirror world, Eliot… it backfired. He’s gone.”_

_“Gone,” Eliot repeated, the sound cracking in his throat._

_“Quentin is dead, and we can’t get him back.” Margo couldn’t keep the tear from slipping down her face if she tired._

_“We can’t-” Eliot’s voice gave out on him, the panic in his eyes broke like a dam, and it washed over his whole face. “No. No, no no that’s not.” He paused, tried to breathe and it hitched so high that he choked on air. “What do you mean we can’t get him bac-” Eliot’s voice got higher and higher and broke into a strangled sob that wanted to wrack his chest but he was trying to hold himself together so badly._

_“Alice thinks the mirror world broke him, he isn’t in the underworld he’s just-”_

_“NO, no no you don’t understand he can’t be,” Eliot full on started to have a panic attack, and Margo climbed on to the bed and pulled his head to her chest, wrapping her arms around his shoulders._

_“Eliot, breathe please.”_

_“You don’t understand, you don’t - I never told him, I fucked up so bad and I never got to tell him I was wrong,” Eliot crumbled mid-sentence, words in a constant stream until they drowned in full heart-wrenching sobs, bent so far over his face was pressed into Margo’s lap, clutching her knee and pant hem like it was his only lifeline in the storm. “FUCK! FUCK FUCK_ **_FUCK_ ** **!”** _he screamed and Margo felt it reverberate through her. “No nonono- I_ **_can’t_ ** _I can’t be too late, I can’t be. I can’t-” Margo held his shaking shoulders, rubbed his spine and tried to get him to breathe in between the spouts of words, rapid fire confessions that were wretched out from deep in his chest. He told her as much as he could manage. What Q had asked him the day after her wedding, how Eliot had turned him down so harshly, the door that led him to taking control of his body for a moment, what memory it was - how fucking sorry he was. How he had promised himself, and his version of Q in the memory, that he would be brave enough to not be scared of how much he fucking loved him. He fucking loved him._

_He loved him, Margo, he LOVED HIM._

_Then Eliot cried and cried, for hours, and Margo held him together as best she could._

_Later, much later, when the sun was starting to dip towards the horizon, Margo told him of the vigil they were having out on the practice field. The fire to memorialize Q and all he meant to them. Asked Eliot if she could help him get ready, because she knew he would want to go. He managed to sit up, feet off the bed, and requested anything black in his wardrobe. A haircut, by her hand only. And something to help him walk so she wouldn’t have to carry him._

_“Anything else?” Margo asked as gently as she could, and waited when he nodded, while he gathered his strength and tried to form words from cracked lips and sore throat._

_“A peach.” He finally said, then let his head dip down again as another wave of tears wracked him to his core._

Margo watched Eilot sitting there, at a bar in Fillory, drinking lemon water and letting the pain marinate into his skin and aura like it was the only thing that was reminding him he wasn’t asleep. That this wasn’t all a nightmare that never ended. She couldn’t let him go on like this, but this was a new version of Eliot’s self-destruction and she didn’t know what to do with it. She needed to know more before she could help him.

“We’re not going to make the castle by dark,” Margo finally said, instead of pushing the million and one other topics she wanted to.

“That’s fine,” Eliot said with no real emotion. “I want to camp outside.”

The _fuck_. “I don’t!” Margo exclaimed, but Eliot was already sliding off the barstool, leaving old Fillorian gold on the counter and slinging the water skins over one shoulder. A smile that might have been half genuine quirked the side of Eliot’s mouth as he led the way out the door, still limping with the cane, but a little more sure of himself as they hit the road to Whitespire once more. Margo counted that as a small win, despite the stupidly long delay this would cause - again, and trailed behind him with a groan.

-

_Brakebills_

-

Penny traveled instantly from his new dorm apartment in the North tower to the interior of the dean’s office the same morning Julia disappeared through a portal with Kady, and immediately wished he hadn’t.

“And now,” Dean Fogg droned from his desk, “I wish for a winning lottery ticket, and a closet of enchanted bespoke suits.” He closed his eyes as he said it, then peeked and looked around. “Shame. I thought there might have been a genie in this bottle.” He poured himself another scotch from said aged brown glass bottle, and finally acknowledged Penny’s presence. “Would you like one?”

Fuck it. “Sure, why not.” He collapsed into the chair opposite Fogg and took the tumbler offered to him. “You wanted to see me?”

“I see your psychic powers are going strong.”

“I can’t build wards tough enough for all this damn magic in the air,” Penny grumbled, sipping from the glass and hissing at the acrid aroma, like gasoline. “The fuck is this?”

“Faye scotch, keep drinking. It gets floral or woody depending on your mood. It also changes colors,” he took a sip to demonstrate and the liquid turned an amber, orange in the glass. “Yes, like a mood ring. An old friend of mine made it in the 70's.”

“What does orange mean,” Penny asked more to keep the conversation moving. He tolerated this Fogg better than the one from his timeline, who had been high on opiates 24/7 and had a mean streak a mile wide. Drunk Fogg was way more entertaining and useful that his Fogg had been. Almost likable, even.

“If memory serves me, _unsettled_ ,” Fogg said with a hint of bitter amusement. “More accurate than mood rings, that’s for sure.”

Penny hid a grin behind the rim of his glass and took another sip, noting the smells wafting off the liquor had changed to fresh grass and pine. The color flickered from green to yellow, making it appear lime green. Like a fucking Midori sour. The irony.

“You seem both active, and tired, though I’m not so sure about the green meaning. I never get green.”

“If you got off your ass once in a while you might,” Penny mumbled before he could stop himself, silence stretching after his words escaped him. Then Fogg snorted and began to chuckle into his cup, so Penny allowed the grin to stay on his lips and laugh with the older man.

“I resent that, last time I got ‘off my ass’ and helped I ruined my best suit,” Fogg told him once he managed to control himself.

“Hence the wishes.”

“Hence the wishes,” Fogg said. He paused and rolled the remains of his Faye scotch around his glass, watching the colors change like spilled oil in the sun. He was wearing his dark glasses again, probably dimming the world as he waited for his drink to chase the continuous hangover away, and it helped keep a barrier between the dean and his student as he gathered his thoughts. “I didn’t call you hear to share a drink.”

“I figured as much,” Penny placated.

“I need your help with a project, but it will take longer than a day - and I need you for more than just your traveling.” Fogg finally took off his glasses, rubbing his eyes and bridge of his nose to help refocus. Penny just held his glass of scotch instead of drinking it, he had a feeling it was far out of his league if it was affecting the dean this way. He was leaning so heavily into his desk he was almost resting his head on his hands.

“Why don’t you get someone else for the magic part?” Penny asked sullenly. He had enough of being a human uber to last him a while. He was ready for a long vacation, especially after what happened with Julia. They hadn’t stayed as close as those first days after Everett was destroyed and Quentin with him. He’d say it had nothing to do with her grief for her best friend, but if he was honest with himself that grief was probably all that kept her from pushing him away that first week or so. Not wanting to lose another friend.

Penny had told her he’d make the same choice, to save her life - her human life - instead of letting her become a goddess and be in a millennium of agony, because he didn’t want to lose her again. Julia let him know in not so many words that there were many different ways to lose someone. And he had lost her.

He didn’t know what to do with himself, now.

“I’ll help,” he told Fogg, resigned after that trip down memory lane. Really, what else did he have to stick around for? Julia didn’t even want him in shouting distance, and it was exhausting to keep an eye on her from such a distance. He’d tried most of the semester, and even Penny could admit it was insanely stalkery and he needed to stop. Distance was exactly what they needed, if he wanted any hope of ever gaining her trust back. He’d wait forever if he had to.

“You don’t even know what it is,” Fogg pointed out, but wasn’t fighting too hard to get Penny to see reason. He watched his not-so former student carefully, contemplating his next question. “I don’t talk about… feelings often.”

“I _really_ don’t want you to start now,” Penny practically groaned.

“Trust me, I don’t want to either, but I feel it needs to be said before we start. Quentin.” He paused for effect and to judge Penny’s reaction, but Penny’s expression didn’t falter. “How are you handling everything?”

Penny just shrugged. “I miss him, which is stupid. But I know he’s gone, and I can’t go back and change anything that happened. I did exactly what-” he cut himself off. Not sure if he was supposed to disclose that he spoke to Penny from this timeline, in some inbetween world, and Penny40 had _told_ him to let Quentin do what he was going to do. To listen to him, when he told Penny to grab Alice and drag her out as she fought him tooth and nail. Part of him still hated his timeline counterpart for that. For putting everyone through that, instead of warning him what was going to happen. But if he hadn’t told Penny to listen to Quentin, everyone would have been attending three funerals instead of one. For weeks he was bitter about the whole situation, and had tried to bury that down deep and focus on Julia instead - who was alive and needed him.

Except, she didn’t need him. She told him that explicitly. Again, Penny was at a loss for where he stood.

“I’m okay,” he finally told Fogg, with a sense of finality that he could always fake so well.

“Well, good,” Fogg told him, sitting up and straightening his suit jacket, redoing a button out of habit. “Because I’m not. I blame myself quite a bit for a part of Quentin’s death that I don’t want to shed light on to your friends. Since I am employing you on this project, I hope I can trust you to keep what we say here between us.” Penny nodded, eyebrows knitted together as his gaze narrowed. Curious but cautious. Fogg let out a huff and drained his glass of scotch, but did not reach for the bottle again.

“Quentin had some mental health problems, before he came to Brakebills.”

“I knew he’d been admitted,” Penny told Fogg, hoping to ease whatever Fogg was holding on to. “I know the about world the other me rescued him from, built in his head when he had that dream curse. It was a mental institution.”

“It’s more than being institutionalized,” Fogg said. “Quentin was suicidal, I had copies of his transcripts; and I won’t go into detail, for his privacy, but it was a very real thing and-” Fogg cleared his throat and looked anywhere but at Penny. “-when he was accepted to Brakebills, he had a meeting with me to sign up for classes. As you all did. In that meeting I told Quentin that what he was feeling was because he was isolated, because he hadn’t know a part of himself - the magic part - was real, and he didn’t need his medication. He gave it to me that day.” Fogg opened a side drawer, and produced said bottle, with Quentin's antidepressants. Still half full.

Penny was silent, staring at the bottle hard, then cutting a sharp glance back up at Dean Fogg. “But he didn’t kill himself. He _was_ killed, saving us. I saw him, I saw the shock on his face before he was turned to ash. He didn’t _want_ this!” Penny could feel anger and rage brewing in his chest, hot as the liquor that burned down his throat moments before.

“Penny, you need to understand something about someone who is suicidal. It is the last stage of depression, it is the disease finally winning. It’s not Quentin’s fault, nor is it any of yours, but it might have been mine - for convincing him that he didn’t need to keep treating that disease.” For as level and clear as his voice was and his face looked, there was something tormented behind it all that Penny couldn’t shake. “Quentin had been spiraling, for a long time, and I think many of us - myself included - didn’t recognize the signs that were in front of us. No, he didn’t want to outright kill himself. But dying for a cause, for his friends that he loved more than anything, he had no quarrels about that. He looked death in the face like none of us could. He’s seen it many times before, in many different ways, and this was just one more. He felt, only he could do this. That he _would_ do this. When it didn’t occur to him that he didn’t _have_ to.”

Try as he might, Penny looked back at the past few months and looked for patterns. He hadn’t been around Quentin as much, and he knew the other man was a dumbass that loved to run headlong into anything no matter how dangerous it might be. Quentin was dead in his timeline, this one was just an extension of that. He’d done a lot of things like this.

“He offered to stay in the castle with the monster, before it got out,” Penny muttered. “He said he’d stay for all eternity, trade places with the princess or whatever so that we could get in and out safe.”

“And no one else would have volunteered to do that, or think to do that, would they?” Fogg added.

“No, they all hated it and ruined the plan the second they could. Eliot shot the damn thing.” Penny looked up. “That doesn’t mean he’s-”

“He was, and no I can’t say for sure all of Quentin’s actions were driven by that instinct. That’s not fair to him. He was brave, and reckless - yes, but still brave. That’s what we need to remember about him.”

“Then why even bring it up?” Penny demanded, now glaring at the dean.

“Because it has to do with our project,” Fogg told him, looking up to see Penny with eyes wide and shock on his face. “No, don’t jump to conclusions. According to Alice, whom is smarter than both you and Quentin was combined, there is no way to save Mr. Coldwater because he is gone. Body and soul. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”

“Maybe I don’t like you drunk,” Penny mused with a growl, not letting up on his glare.

“Well get used to it, we will be drinking a lot where we’re going. I have another mistake to mend, and it would be a long way to travel without you.” Fogg finally stood up, not even stumbling a little, effortlessly rightening himself and smoothing down his jacket. “Do you need anything?”

“I was already packing my bags,” Penny told him, not phased in admitting he’d been ready to cut and run from Brakebills anyway. This wasn’t the place for him anymore.

“Good, go get them then blip back here. My stuff is ready as well, I just need to gather a house warming gift.”

Penny closed his eyes and reappeared in his dorm room, stuffing a few things into his already half packed duffel, before slinging it over his shoulder and traveling back to the dean’s office. Dean Fogg was in his liquor cabinet, surprise surprise, picking through bottles. He finally decided on a tall, slender one with clear liquid inside and no label. Cradling the bottle in his arm like a wine sommelier, he reached for his own travel suitcase (very posh, all leather and silver buckles) and stood beside Penny.

“Ready?” Penny asked unnecessarily, but looking at the bottle under Fogg’s arm openly.

“Quite, let’s get going,” Fogg told him, offering his arm that held the bottle, and almost smirked at Penny’s annoyed expression, eyes shut and waiting for their destination. “Brakebills South, if you please.”

Penny’s eyes snapped open, looking straight at Fogg. “No.”

“Oh, yes,” Fogg said full of mirth. “Whenever you’re ready.” Penny ground out a few incoherent profanities and squeezed his eyes shut in preparation for the chill of the South Pole.

This was going to _suck_.

-

_The Library_

-

No demolishment had been started yet, although the main building still had blood in it’s cracks and crevices. Alice had spent the majority of her first “day” (since time wasn’t really a fixed construct in the world of the Library and the Neitherlands) getting acquainted with her new office/apartments and speed reading introductory manuals. The spell casted to teach her to speed read was worth the whole trip already, she was going to learn so much so _fast_.

She also received an overview of the big projects that needed attending: the rebuilding of certain branches, magic flow management, and the question on the Order’s internal structure and what changes needed to be made. Alice was going to let all the current organizations stand - for now - but she would be making changes soon. Big changes. Effective immediately the Library was no longer in charge of the ambient magic on Earth, and she sent someone to adjust the cypohn at the Blackspire wellspring in Fillory. It was nice being able to have so many people under her to do the menial things: disconnect all the magic gauge boxes, inform the powers that be on Earth that they were free of the Library’s reign of terror, and that it would be under new management. Alice was ready to tackle this thing head on. A project almost custom made for her.

Why in the worlds Zelda decided to give Alice this amount of unchecked power she couldn’t fathom, and Alice still didn’t trust Zelda further than she could throw her. Physically. Magically she could probably punt her across the Neitherlands. If Alice Quinn had one thing, it was a long and accurate memory. She had not forgotten anything Zelda had done the past months, from the fairy bone dust all the way to the poison room cure, her judgement was questionable at best and not to be swept under the rug even though she helped towards the end of the fight. But Alice also knew something about getting second, or third, or fourth chances. Quentin had taught her that. So she would allow Zelda to stay close, to lead her as she learned her way around the Library and the Order that ran it, but keep an eye on her at all times.

Needless to say, she did a lot of complicated and homebrewed wards on her living quarters. She didn’t need to sleep with one eye open, too.

Alice had already finished reading the structural instructions, manuals, and personal accounts left behind by Everett (which she found in her new desk, she tried not to be creeped out that she had his old office) before the afternoon was through. She had already started on some basic ideas for building a new internal infrastructure for the Order, changing the organization into something else entirely - possibly like an actual library and less like a totalitarian regime. But even as she scribbled notes and ideas on paper, requested books to research the Order’s history and past mistakes, something wouldn’t stop worming it’s way to the forefront of her mind. A thought that had made itself known a few days ago, and try as she might she couldn’t bury it under all the logic and facts she had to counter it.

What was worse, it wasn’t even her own idea.

The morning after she and Penny23 had returned from the Mirror World, distraught and stretched so thin she felt like a overly-wrung out washcloth, Julia had cornered her and demanded to know her reasoning. Why she had that hopeless look clouding her eyes and steaming up her glasses with tears that wouldn’t stop blurring her vision. Julia needed to know why she, Alice Quinn, had given up.

But not matter what Alice told her, Julia insisted _but you don’t know for sure!_ That was true, she also didn’t know for sure the other planets in the solar system couldn’t be vacation homes, but she believed the facts presented and she knew what the conclusions all pointed towards. Quentin wasn’t just dead. He had done magic in a vacuum, and it had backfired in the worst way. She would never forget that image of Q dissolving into dust in front of that mirror, couldn’t even go into the lab when she arrived back at Brakebills. It had destroyed every bit of what and who he was; body, soul, shade, there would be nothing left. And anything that was wouldn’t escape the pocket world that shouldn’t have even been there.

_“Listen, Q and I have been to the underworld,” Julia had gone on to insist, keeping her in one spot until she said her piece - and Alice had been too exhausted to fight her. “When you get there it’s like a waystation, a hotel lobby with reception and everything. They send you on these little excursion activities until you are ready to pass on to wherever you go.”_

_“Like Heaven and Hell?” Alice and said monotonously, mocking and mean in her head but Julia didn’t even pause to notice._

_“I don’t think so, it’s more complicated than that. But Q could still be there! Waiting for his metrocard to move on. We can’t just leave him down there and not even try to see if he’s still there. He wouldn’t just leave any of us down there.”_

_“He’s not down there, Julia,” Alice told her again, no longer mean or mocking._

_“But you don’t KNOW.” Julia was holding back tears of frustration, doing whatever breathing exercises or shit she needed to stay calm, and Alice felt nothing but pity for her in that moment. “He just has to get through all the bureaucratic bullshit and then he could move on, but Q wouldn’t just be sitting there. He wouldn’t take any of this sitting down and neither should we! What if he reaches out and we aren’t even listening because we’re having a damn memorial for him when we could be saving him!” She finally dissolved into tears and Alice caught her, let her grab on to her arms and rest her head on her shoulder as she cried._

_“Julia, there’s nothing left of him to move on,” Alice said as gently as she could, but even her voice hitched at the thought. She hated laying it out in such plain, harsh terms, it hurt too much to remind herself that she was absolutely helpless here. Even if she had still been a niffin, she couldn’t have saved Quentin after what he did. But oh, how she longed for that state of pure magic in that moment, because then her heart wouldn’t feel like a chasm in her chest. “I’m so sorry, you know I would be doing anything I could if I thought there was a chance. But there’s not.” Julia had cried a little more, then pulled herself together with an amazing amount of strength and poise, and left the conversation there in the upstairs corridor of the cottage. But there was something in her red rimmed eyes that said she still was not completely convinced._

Now that Alice was in the heart of the Library, with the resources of the Order unlimited and at her fingertips, she couldn’t help but begin to doubt her own logic as well. It was a frustrating thing, doubting herself - or her knowledge anyway. She knew what she knew, facts were facts and they would never fail her. But now she was hoping for a bit of that chaos that always seemed to surround and intertwine with their lives. What _if_ Quentin's soul had survived the mirror world? What if something had took pity on him and gave him a chance at peace? Was that really so crazy?

Yes, yes it was. But it was still bugging the shit out of her. She would never be able to let it go, leave that stone unturned, and live with herself. Which would be a very long time, now that the Library was her new home.

With a determined set of her jaw, she dropped her pencil - awaiting an adapter for her laptop like a kid on Christmas morning - and paged her secretary. Yes, she had a secretary, or intern, she wasn’t sure which. But the small pixie-like girl with short black hair came quickly in and stopped in front of Alice’s desk with a tiny notepad in hand.

“I need to put in some more requests, and these need to be expedited,” Alice told her matter-of-factly.

“Expedited still takes 2-3 weeks if it’s ano-”

“Another branch, I’m aware,” Alice interrupted. “Let’s try and get things from this branch.” She paused and thought about all the material she read through that morning. They wouldn’t have all the deaths that passed through the underworld here in this branch. The Library didn’t run the Underworld, it was just in charge of the _bureaucratic bullshit_ Julia had mentioned, collecting the last bits of information before their books were shelved. “Do we have ledgers of employees for all the branches here?”

“I believe so, Ms. Quinn,” the intern said carefully, looking up in thought, her gaze skittering uncertainty. “But that will be a lot of volumes, is there a certain branch you need?”

“Yes, the Underworld Branch. I need correspondence for a certain employee, though I’m not sure which department he’s in.”

She nodded as she wrote down the information. “Their system is so full it’d be impossible to look by name, it’s not going to be a light read,” she tried to warn Alice, but Alice just shook her head and brought her hands together in front of her, steepled on the desk.

“It’s important, so as quickly as you can get it-” she paused, feeling terrible she didn’t remember the girl’s name. She had to be the same age or around there as herself.

“Crissy,” the intern told her with a smile. “I know it’s been a lot of information today, but - I’ve read your book, before you changed it, and I think you’re doing great. Going to do great.”

Alice tried to smile past the surprise on her face, and nodded at Crissy in thanks, dismissing her to go find her ledger. Her brain had to be on fire with how much she’d crammed in the past 24 hours (speaking of, Neitherland days were 32 hours long, and that was going to be quite an adjustment) and she could barely process anything else. But she could do this last thing, speedskim the volume, and find the address in the underworld for one person’s office. The only person who might be able to help her find out if Quentin had passed through, or was still there swimming with sharks or something. Or if he'd never appeared at all, just as she predicted.

It’d be a lot faster than waiting 2 weeks for death records, and to be honest - she trusted her friend’s answers more than a record written by the Order. If anyone could help her, it was Penny.

-

_Fillory_

-

_Eliot dreams of the cottage their first night in Fillory. Not the Physical Kids Cottage, which he knows every nook and cranny of from the time stuck inside his own mind. But their cottage. The one by the mosaic, in past Fillory, which Eliot also remembers every nook and cranny of. He spent 50 years of his life there, the best years, until he was old and grey and the most fabulous great-grandparent there ever was. Until he died, and Quentin had tried to bury him there in the yard between the mosaic tiles and the vegetable garden. Eliot wasn’t sure how he knew that, how he saw it from above in a flicker of memory even as he stood there, Quentin stooped and old and still trying to dig a grave. But Fillory was funny like that, always was, always would be._

_He looked around, the sun glinting off the thatch roof, the bright green ivy and towering tomato plants, the closeline with multicolored items (Q’s favorite shirt, his favorite scarf, Teddy’s favorite blanket) blowing in the soft breeze as they dried. His shoes (their handmade sandals, when had they switched from his oxfords?) kicked at the basket of chalk nubs, sketchbooks filled with their attempts at the perfect picture. The beauty of all life. Looking back up, Eliot no longer saw Q old and grey, but young - maybe not yet ten years older than he’d last seen him - taking the wash off the line, and Ted running around the yard with his arms outspread like he was flying._

_How blind they had been, trying to find the beauty of all life in something as simple as a picture. No amount of colors or squares could capture what was in front of him._

_“You almost done?” he found himself asking, adjusting a strap over his shoulder he hadn’t realized was there. Q looked back at him, then smiled and it was radiant. It pulled at his heart until Eliot thought he might cry. He’d thought he had no more tears left to cry._

_“Almost, I’ll get this down in case it rains,” Q told him over the wind. Eliot remembered this day, remembered as his body moved on it’s own, going through the motions of the memory. Helping without saying anything out loud, until the line was empty and Q had gone inside to drop the basket on the doorstep and out of the weather. “Ted! Let’s go!”_

_A small hand grabbed Eliot’s free one, appearing from nowhere, and began tugging him towards the road away from the cottage. It was a market day, and they would go and get things for the month, bundles of new cloth and art supplies and food, and would get caught in a rain storm on the way back. Hiding under a giant talking tree for hours until it passed, and Eliot had to carry Teddy back while Q carried the goods they bought. It’d be late, Q and El would sit on their makeshift porch and drink El’s 300th attempt at wine as the stars poked through the vanishing clouds one by one. It was a perfect day, the most imperfect, perfect day, just like their family. Eliot felt wet tears on his cheeks and he brushed them away - not sure how, since both hands were occupied - and then he remembered again this was a dream. One that would end, soon._

_Quentin came back out with more empty parcel sacks for market, and Ted pulled on Eliot’s hand to drag him down the path, making a grin tug at Eliot’s lips. But suddenly something felt off._

_“Oh,” Q suddenly said absently. “I forgot something.” Eliot looked back, not remembering this part of the day, but it was such a Quentin thing to say - to do - that it felt right. But Quentin looked up in confusion, patting his various pockets as if he was looking for car keys. “I left something behind.”_

_“The house is right there,” Eliot almost laughed at the ridiculousness of it all, but something still felt so wrong. “Go get it, or have you forgotten that too?”_

_“No, it’s not there,” Q said, eyebrows drawn together in utter confusion._

_“At the house?”_

_“No,” he said in the same distant tone. “I left something behind.” He looked up and locked eyes with Eliot, he felt it in his bones. “When I died.”_

_Thunder cracked loudly overhead, with a rumble so deep it vibrated in his chest. Ted started to cry, squeezing Eliot’s hand harder and pressing himself to Eliot’s side. He was always so scared of thunder; needed both parental figures to comfort him whenever it occurred, nothing else would calm him down. Eliot picked him up out of habit that should have been long forgotten, and closed the distance between himself and Quentin. Mindful of the storm that appeared from nowhere, blowing leaves and bits of forest debris about in the wind wildly as everything grew darker._

_“Something of ours?” he insisted, his heart beating hard in his chest and hoping for something he wasn’t even sure had a name._

_“No, something of mine.” Q’s expression hadn’t changed, his tone no more desperate, but he looked at Eliot like he was willing him to understand. “I left something behind, I forgot.”_

_“Q, is that you?” Eliot asked slowly, breathlessly, again not daring to hope - but this time knowing exactly what he was hoping for. Margo had told him all about Fen’s dreams from the questing beasts. But this felt different, so much more personal. He looked around at the storm wrecked home he and Q had shared for a lifetime, then back at Quentin with frantic desperation that pulled his face taut. There was only one way to know._

_He gently put Teddy on the ground, wiped the tears from his eyes, and told him he was going to stop the storm. Then he stood up, brought his hands up as if to cast, and tried to push his thumb through the palm of his opposite hand._

_The whole world ceased in a freeze-frame, leaves and twigs and bits of the world suspended in air. Teddy’s curls permanently tousled, his clothes pulled in the direction of the wind. But he wasn’t moving or breathing, only Eliot moved as his hands came back to his sides and he exhaled carefully. The dream had stopped._

_Quentin wasn’t moving either, he wasn’t breathing, his eyes locked on Eliot with implorement shining in the dark depths. But he was part of the dream. He wasn’t there with Eliot, trying to speak through the dream, or he would have been able to move. Eliot exhaled again, in a huff, blinking back disappointment and tried to refocus himself. The dream would only stay this way so long before he woke up._

_“Questing beast, questing beast,” he reminded himself, and whirled around, looking for something that moved. Anything. But there was nothing, it was if he was walking around inside a painting. Nothing twitched, trembled, or breathed, and there was nothing out of place. It was all as it was supposed to be._

_He came back to where Q was rooted to the spot and looked at his face again, the face he tried so hard to forget during the day, and which he longed to see more than anything._

_“Okay, you’re not here,” he said out loud, to solidify it and keep himself on track. “So this is me.” He stared so hard at Q, outlined every inch of his face and eyes, and tried to bring forth whatever this was supposed to mean. “This is me, and I know you forgot something. Something important. You left it behind. For who? For me? For someone?” He swallowed and licked his lips in a nervous tick he had outgrown years ago. “Will it help me find you?”_

_The world started to shimmer, Eliot could feel the spell beginning to slip. Could feel himself beginning to wake. But he didn’t have his answers yet! What if he forgot the dream?_

_“What is it, Q!? What did you forget?” he was yelling and he didn’t know why, as if the storm was still pressing in loud and heavy. “Tell me, please!” But Quentin was still frozen, his eyes stuck in permanent desperation, even as the world started to move like the storm had begun again. The wind howling, pushing against them. Even as a trail of blood began to leak from the corner of his mouth and drip down his chin._

Eliot sat bolt up and gasped for air, cold and sharp as it was autumn in Fillory and their campfire had been rendered to mere embers that pulsed with the wind. He was covered in sweat, and his heart hammered in his chest like a war drum, and he could feel someone watching him.

Across the circle Margo sat in the dark, waiting and staring at him as he came to his sense, then she moved her right hand in a pattern that brought the embers back to life. Fire flickering and licking at the remains of what logs were left. She wouldn’t stop staring, and Eliot couldn’t look at her.

“I don’t want to talk about-”

“Tough shit,” Margo told him evenly. They had much to talk about, she knew some about his life that he had with Quentin while they were trying to finish the mosaic, to find the key, but not all of it. Not enough to see the full picture of what Eliot had said no to the day Q laid his heart at Eliot’s feet. But after that dream, he didn’t know if he could bring it up. Not now, not when his head was spinning with what he’d just seen.

Margo cleared her throat, and asked very carefully. “Was it a questing creature?”

“No,” Eliot told her, moving himself gingerly, careful of his stomach. He leaned against a stump by their fire so he was looking at her across the low flames.

“You’re sure?”

“I froze the dream, no one was there but me.” Margo nodded at Eliot’s assessment, and was quiet as she picked her next words. A lot of private conversations with Margo, when met with such resistance, was like playing a game of chess. She chose her words as carefully as she would moves on the board. Not everyone got this treatment, Eliot himself had only been subject to it a handful of times, but he _knew_ this conversation would be this way. Which is why he avoided it so long.

“Tell me about your dream, all you can remember,” Margo demanded, as gently as she was capable of. “Even if you and Q were dicked down.”

“We weren’t, it would almost be better if we were,” Eliot laughed with no humor, rubbing his hands over his face and through his hair to try and calm his rattled nerves. He didn’t even see Margo stand up and come over by him, sit down beside him on the cold, hard ground and take his arm. Rest her head on his shoulder in apology, for so many things he couldn’t even list. He took her hand in his and held it tightly, giving in to sharing a bit of the burden that had been laid so heavily on his shoulders the past weeks.

And he told her his dream, down to the last detail.

Maybe the two of them, together, could make sense of what he’d seen. Maybe there was still some hope, somewhere, in the vast amount of worlds out there. In the magic of Fillory.

Otherwise, what else was it all for?

-

_The Metro_

-

It shouldn’t have been such a surprise that the metro card actually led to an underground metro station, which had been vast and empty when Quentin descended the stairs to the subway platform. It looked just like the one by his old apartment in Brooklyn, when he had still been an undergrad and was trying to find his feet in the city. But the familiar lines and shadows, cracks in the concrete and brick, helped ease his apprehension as he waited on the abandoned platform. He didn’t have to wait long, or maybe he had and just didn’t notice the passing of time as an inconvenience anymore, but a train pulled up more clean and slick than any that had belonged to the state of New York. It looked fresh off the line and never used, barely made a sound as the doors opened awaiting it’s single passenger.

Quentin had a brief, devious thought to see if he missed the train what might happen. Would it even leave without him? There was no one else there, on the train or off.

Deciding not to press his luck, he boarded the train and sat in one of the hundreds of pristine seats. The comfortable forward-facing ones, not knowing how long or far his final destination was. His leg bounced a bit in anxiety and worry about where he was going. When Penny had told him it was ‘where he was supposed to go next’ it sounded so zen and perfect. Peaceful, and Quentin had accepted that explanation with a smile. But now the effect seemed to have worn off. Maybe the underworld had something in the air like Fillory did to keep everyone calm and pliable. Breathable Xanax.

What felt like hours later, Quentin’s anxiety had ebbed away to boredom. The train continued on it’s steady track, never stopping again, and only inky blackness outside his window. Sometimes Quentin would try to look further in the distance, to see if he could make anything out in the dark; but something always made him draw back and stare around the empty subway car. He probably wouldn’t like knowing what lay beyond the black infinity surrounding him. Monsters and Leviathans, floating jellyfish, giant tortoise shell sections as the train glided along a single groove in it’s vastness. Maybe it really was turtles all the way down.

Sometimes he’d close his eyes, lean his head back, and wonder if he could sleep - just to pass the time. Could the dead sleep? But all that would happen is his other senses kicked in and he noticed things that felt all too familiar. Subliminal sounds and smells, music that always made his heart ache, the sound of a pencil scratching on paper, ice in a cocktail shaker, and he’d sit up straight and look around - but there was no one else with him.

The smells were most comforting, and took more concentration and time to work out, but after a long while he was able to pinpoint what they were. His dad’s aftershave, the old book smell of his first addition _Fillory and Further_ novels, dust that clung to the book covers Alice would pull from the back of the library - she would always clean them off before opening them, a habit that calmed the spells on the old tomes. Eliot’s cologne, always faint and only detectable when he pulled you in close for a tight hug that chased the breath from your lungs. Margo’s coconut lotion she wore before bed each night, that she could only get from one small ma and pop shop in her hometown in California. Julia’s apartment, with all the greenery living and breathing in the space, brightening the air with a freshness incomparable anywhere else. Sometimes he could even smell the incense that used to cling to all of Penny’s possessions when they were roommates, from his long hours spent in the psychics’ meditation room.

The further the train went, the more intense all the memories became, until Quentin wasn’t sure that he was even awake. Bits and pieces of his life were so vivid in his mind it was as if they had just happened. All the bright and beautiful moments, the ones that hurt so much he could cry, the anger and frustration, the fear and panic, all of it. He even relieved his second life, the one in past Fillory, with El and Teddy and Arielle. Poor Arielle, she had suffered so much that last winter she lived. Somehow he knew he wouldn’t see her again, or his father, or even his son or grandkids. Wherever the train was taking him, he could feel the pull of it like it had strings tied to the ribs and organs in his chest, yanking him forward impatiently.

But he wasn’t ready yet. As much as Quentin wanted the pressure to lessen, to finally fucking _get there_ so he could find out what it was all about - where he was supposed to be from here on out - he wasn’t done looking back at his life. He didn’t want to let them go. He never even got to speak to Eliot after they freed him of the monster, that glance across his own memorial fire wasn’t enough. A secondary pull, this time wrapped tightly around his heart, began to pull him back into his seat, and it ached with longing. With regret. This wasn’t peace, this was bullshit. Wasn’t he supposed to feel serene and ready for what came next? All he felt was loss. What the hell was he supposed to do now that everything he ever wanted had been left behind to go on without him? What if they weren’t going to be okay, Penny never answered his damn question if they would be okay now without him - that asshole! He only said they’d be okay once they were dead like him - and Quentin knew he wouldn’t be able to live with that answer. Or with himself, if something happened to one of them without him-

The train wheels screeched like air raid sirens beneath Quentin’s seat, and he was jerked forward so fast he smacked his head on the seat in front of him. Bracing himself against the force of the train stopping from what must have been full speed, Quentin’s breath came in and out in panic - the lack of a heartbeat in his ears more terrifying than anything. He could hear _everything,_ creaking from the strain. He looked out the window, hoping to see some hint of where or why they were stopping. But there was nothing but black emptiness surrounding him.

He swallowed hard and moved his hair out of his face, nervousness wiggling it’s way back into his every limb. This couldn’t be right, there was nothing here. Was it something he’d done? He hadn’t said a damn word in hours - maybe days, however long he’d been on this damn train. But somehow, someway, Quentin had a feeling this was his fault.

What the fuck had he done now?


	2. Episode 502

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is excruciatingly long and I'm so sorry. So very, very sorry. It also took an extra week to write, but y'all get an extra 7500 words so I hope that makes up for it all. Thank you to everyone who left me subscriptions, bookmarks, kudos and comments <3 especially everyone who mentioned that I kept the voices in character. This is my first Magicians fic so I'm ecstatic to hear that from multiple people. Thank you so much.
> 
> Chapter Trigger Warnings and notes/disclaimers:  
> -Much more suicide mention, ideation, and discussion. I start to get into the plot points it centers around.  
> -More grief focus, and dumb decisions/actions that come from them.  
> -All quotations from _The Fellowship of the Ring_ and _The Return of the King_ belong to Tolkien and other respective copyright owners.  
> -Russian translations for Mayakovsky are in the end notes. You don't actually need them, Penny doesn't understand him and gets along fine, but they're there if you need them. Purely Google translate so I apologize to all native speakers.  
> -Because someone asked: I don't have any particular actors/actresses in mind for my OC's - except for the Dark King, who is in this chapter. My casting choice would be Robert Sheehan. No regrets.  
> \- Did I mention it's long? It's stupidly long. If I could have trimmed it or moved stuff I would have, but it would have crowded later chapters. Let us all join in a prayer circle that future chapters never ever ever end up this long again.  
> \- No beta again, all my own edits. Any problems, typos, inconsistencies are mine and mine alone. 
> 
> Please enjoy and thank you again for reading <3

\--

 

Episode 502:

Concerning Hobbits, Kings, and Hedgewitches...

\--

 ~~ _Marina’s_~~ _Kady’s Penthouse_

-

Julia recognized the penthouse windows as soon as she saw them, crawling out of the matching mirror off the bridge between the Manhattan apartment building and the Physical Kids Cottage. She’d forgotten to be apprehensive about mirror travel until after she and Kady had stepped through the one at Brakebills and ended up on the floating bridge. It had stopped her in her tracks, heart caught in her throat, until Kady tugged on her hand and led her along. Julia knew, logically, that she couldn’t access the mirror world from where she stood unless the connection was broken, but it still sent a pang of realization through her that ricocheted painfully the entire time she resided there.

Then ending up in Marina’s old apartment, where so many horrible and amazing things had happened, shocked her out of that state almost instantly. Kady must have kept up her rent with the BabaYaga, and Marina had to be off grid somewhere; because neither would have been okay with what was happening there if she was free-loading.

The entire apartment was bursting with people, bustling about on cell phones, laptops with headsets, video chats, or talking to handheld mirrors that didn’t reflect their own faces. One or two more advanced persons had what appeared to be floating bubbles hovering by their faces, which glowed and pulsed like an audio feed as the person on the other side spoke to the castor. They were draped over couches, at desks, pacing the room with hands moving in animated motions, and as far as the eye could see Julia spotted hedgewitch tattoos.

“What - is all this?” Julia asked, and had to lean into Kady’s space in order to be heard.

“Our cooperative magic spell started something big,” Kady told her, not able to hide the prideful grin threatening to break across her face. “After all the bullshit with The Library everyone around the world, not just Hedges, decided it would be better to be on our own side. Working together, against whatever might come next.” Julia could see most people had notebooks or binders in front of them, and the laptop screens had scans of spells so complicated she resisted the urge to drift over and inspect them herself. Her fingers itching for the days when all she could do was get her hands on the next spell, reach the next level, to see what _more_ she could do. What she was capable of.

“You’re sharing spells?” Her eyes were alight with the thought. Hedges used to have to pilgrim from House to House, proving themselves to the Hedges there before they could even get a glimpse of their spell book. That’s what the star tattoos were originally for, to shorten the process.

“For now, but it’s looking to be so much bigger than that,” Kady said in a her own dialed back excitement. “Spells from Japan and India, and Russia especially, are taught so differently than here. It’s going to take forever just to come up with sorting systems and ways to teach the different styles. Some people are already talking about traveling here for a month or so to teach, and we send someone else to them in their place.”

“Hedgewitch exchange program,” Julia beamed. “This is incredible. Have you told anyone else? Dean Fogg?”

“He’s already sent some diplomats,” Kady pointed across the room to a few 4th years students and one Knowledge Discipline professor Julia had seen around campus. He was one of the few with talking bubbles floating in front of his glasses as he demonstrated a complex spell that moved so intricately he appeared to have more than 10 fingers to complete it. “And of course, I’m here, too.”

“Running it all.” Julia shook her head in astonishment. What the hell had she been missing out on, relearning Popper 1-40 at Brakebills.

“Well, not all by myself.”

“Oh, look what the cat dragged in,” a _distinctly_ smug voice said from Kady’s other side, and Julia saw Pete slither into view with a headset around his neck and clipboard in hand. “Should’ve known you couldn’t stay away from something like this.”

“I could say that same about you,” Julia bit back with a smile. “Found a new Marina?”

“Ugh, don’t call me that,” Kady groaned, her smile disintegrating to a frown so fast it could give whiplash.

“That’s what everyone else calls her, too,” Pete stage whispered to Julia, which earned him a not so nice punch in the arm from Kady. “Ow, ow, easy on the merchandise.”

Kady scowled at him but continued her tour, “Pete organizes things as best he can, keeps track of who talks to who and what groups are forming that might be closer together geographically. I’m stuck in management, I get to approve invites and put out fires, but it’s also my apartment so without me they’d be on the street.”

“Again.”

Kady grinned at Julia’s smirk and led her towards the kitchen, where the bartop looked like a charging port station at the airport - full of laptops and phones and everyone talking to someone that wasn’t there but somewhere across the world. She grabbed a pair of beers out of the fridge, which was mostly full of beverages, and the two stepped out onto the penthouse balcony where it was quieter. Pete trailed behind until Kady waved him off, “we’ll talk later.”

Julia’s head was spinning, she looked back at the giant windows that bordered the balcony door and trailed along the outside of the apartment building. There had to be close to a hundred people in that room, and who knew how many others they were connected with. This was monumental.

“If there’s anything out there that can help you access your magic, without torturing yourself each time,” Kady pointed towards the people inside with her bottle, “you’ll find it here.” Julia was so hopeful, so grateful in that moment, it hurt to breathe. She had been so resigned to her way of casting magic, she hadn’t dared to hope for an alternative in weeks. She took a sip from her beer to help swallow the lump in her throat and finally looked at Kady with clear eyes that weren’t misted with tears.

“Thank you,” Julia said.

“Don’t thank me yet,” Kady said back honestly. “We’ve got to see what we can find first.”

“Even this is enough, you’ve built something amazing here,” she looked back and marveled again at the organization continuing to build itself within the four walls.

“Yeah, I just have to make sure it keeps going the right direction,” Kady replied. “We want Hedgewitch United Nations, and we’re on our way so far.” She downed the rest of her beer, and left the rest unsaid. Julia knew that habit well, Kady never wanted to put the bad stuff out into the world. Speaking it always breathed life into whatever you feared most. What was happening was wonderful, but it could also go South very, very quickly. They could just as easily form the Hedgewitch Legion of Doom instead. She nodded in agreement, in understanding, and also drained her drink.

“You have an idea where to start?” Julia asked, feeling something giddy rising in her chest.

“Well Professor Li might give us a direction,” Kady shrugged, nodding towards the Knowledge Professor that had completed his demonstration and was conversing inaudibly with the other side of his communication bubble. “But I’d put my money on Darsha, she’s classically trained from some school outside of Mumbai. She’s wicked smart, dabbled in almost everything. Or maybe Keiko, she chats everyone up.” Kady glanced at Julia out of the corner of her eye, and huffed out a laugh at the visible excitement painted across her face.

“Well, what are we waiting for? Let’s go talk to some people,” Julia insisted, eyes alight again when she returned Kady’s glance, her small smile contagious. It felt so good to smile again, and mean it with all her heart. Somehow, she knew that if Quentin could see her now, he’d be smiling for her too.

Things were finally beginning to look up.

-

_Fillory_

-

The spinning, glittering towers of Whitespire should have brought a sense of home at first sight. Eliot had lived there just as long as he’d attended Brakebills, and for a long time he hadn’t been allowed to leave Fillory at all - Whitespire _was_ home. When the sun glinted off the steel diamonds spinning atop the towering white brick columns, something nostalgic and comfortingly familiar ached in Eliot’s chest, shined bright in Margo’s eyes, and they could forget for a moment that the number of towers had quadrupled into a monstrous eyesore in the valley. For a single moment they could feel good about being home, and forget that it wasn’t really theirs anymore.

For the time being, they put Eliot’s dream on the back burner. They could do nothing while having no direction other than speculation - which led nowhere during their discussion in the small hours of the morning. They needed to find Fen and Josh, reclaim their kingdom, and maybe recruit a questing creature to make sense of what he saw the night before. All of which couldn’t be done outside the castle. They had their work cut out for them.

Their entire court was dead and gone; the guards who knew their daily habits better than they did, all of the advisers they trusted and the ones they despised, any allies or friends they had made inside the walls of the castle were all gone. Tic, Rafe, Abigale, they had no one. And none would recognize their faces. They had no illusions about how difficult it would be to even make it to the throne room, but it didn’t hurt to give it the old college try.

Margo in particular wasn’t quite sure what the palace guard would do if they realized she’d been banished from Fillory and told not to ever return. It was autumn and she had every excuse to wear gloves in the frigid foreshadow of winter, conveniently covering the brands on her wrists - but that was all she had going for her. Fake it til you make it.

They were stopped at the gate, as expected, but the magic words “children of Earth” opened it pretty quickly - Eliot and Margo exchanged subtle glances as she took his arm and they walked into the castle with heads held high. Nothing could be so easy, so they refused to let their guard down. They glided through the winding corridors, armed escort in tow, without needing any guidance to the throne room; looking for all the world like the royalty they damn should have been. It had been carved into their bones. First impressions were everything, and they wanted to walk through the crowd of court appointed advisers and sub-royalty like they were the ones hosting the gathering. Not one person would dare to doubt their place in Fillory, not even this Dark King.

The throne room was indeed full of people, and Margo again noted the distinct lack of talking animals. A double-edged sword; if they had been pushed back to second-hand citizens (like before her reign) then she wouldn’t have as much pull in court, but she could very well get them to rally outside the castle walls. Hopefully the majority could still speak at all, she hadn’t even thought to ask at the tavern by the shore. A lot could happen in a couple centuries.

All four of the thrones that used to belong to the Children of Earth had been removed, destroyed or stored in a damp room somewhere in the basement, and replaced with a giant chair with a fanned back that looked eerily like the Iron Throne. Margo could barely keep the scoff off her face. So tacky. Then she saw draped across the throne was a thin young man, sprawled for all the world like a giant house cat sun-bathing under the ceiling-high windows, and watching them approach beneath a head of outrageous black curls and a lot of smudgy black eye make-up. It was almost edgy, in a New York Fashion week kind of way, but at that point it just annoyed her more than anything else could have. _This_ was The Dark King (™)? He looked like a frontman she’d seen at Warp Tour five years ago.

He was also _not_ 300 years old.  

Wide, dark eyes followed their path until they were presented in front of the throne, where Margo and Eliot did their most elegant, passive-aggressive, bow and curtsy to the man-child who hadn’t even sat up in his chair yet. His expression was almost manic, stare unblinking, but appreciative at their gesture.

“Your dark royal highness,” Eliot lamented, all flourish and charm.

“Our Dark King, long may you reign,” Margo said as well, parroting what she had heard countless times outside the palace, though she wasn’t able to keep all of the mocking tone out of her voice. She really needed to work on that. “Thank you for taking our audience.”

“Of course,” he replied, finally swinging his long legs off the arm of the throne and standing up at the top of the dias to greet them. “Children of Earth, it’s been so long. Whom do I have the pleasure of meeting?” He asked them both, though his eyes trailed to Eliot and stayed there.

“ _Former_ High Kings, from Centuries ago,” Eliot told him, taking a single step closer. He’d noticed the look too. It’d been a while since they’d had to use a honey pot routine; Margo felt a small pang of doubt that Eliot would be able to do more than casually flirt - if that - but hopefully they wouldn’t need to. “I am Eliot, the Spectacular,” he smiled sharply, showing more teeth than he should have, and Margo bit back a wince knowing who it was that had dubbed Eliot that title and how much it must hurt him to say it out loud. “And this is Margo, the Destroyer.”

“So extravagant,” the Dark King teased, but it was too early to tell if it was malicious or not. The entire throne room was so quiet it was unnerving. “So serious. Tell me, former High Kings, what brings you to your former castle.” He grinned back with just as much teeth, and all the bite that should have come with his position. Margo could admire someone who knew how to play their role well.

“Information, your highness, we’re looking for more former royalty,” Margo told him, leveling her dark eyes at the thoroughly entertained ones above her as she took the Dark King’s undivided attention. “We’ve been gone a while, and misplaced them.”

“The _Destroyer_ ,” the Dark King drawled, taking another step down the dias, something menacing lingering around his whole being - she couldn’t get a good angle oh him. “Do you plan on destroying anyone here? Me?” He flat out asked, near giggling, irises so dark that the black smudged make up made the whites of his eyes stood out enticingly. Wildly. Borderline savage.

Margo’s returned smile was sharper than a shark’s. “No plans whatsoever.” The Dark King’s lip curled up in mirth, looking on the verge of laughter.

“Oh, I like you.”

“Enough to help us?”

“As much as I can,” he said, finally stepping to the floor in front of Margo and Eliot, looking between them like he hadn’t been this entertained in eons. Maybe he was 300 years old. “Come, walk with me. Pickwick! You too!” A short man in the shadows rushed forward, hands clasping a tome in front of him like a shield.

“You still have the Pickwicks in court?” Eliot inquired, astonished the family had stayed clinging to the belly of the beast for the past three centuries. Tic had fought tooth and nail to stay where he’d been during their reign, including switching sides a few times, but Eliot also hadn’t thought the man would continue his family line. He’d didn’t really seem the… family type.

“Oh yes, they know everything. I’ve had them around the entire time, they kind of replace each other after a while. This way!” He was maybe only an inch or two shorter than Eliot, but made up for it with the wild curls. Sweeping out of the throne room to some of the side hallways and square gardens that didn’t used to be part of the castle, the Dark King led them away from prying ears through the maze Whitespire had become. They took paths that would have led them straight through walls centuries ago, and finally came to a garden with half a ceiling above them and walls lined with full book shelves.

“I came into the castle right through there,” he pointed to the ceiling, a permanent skylight of broken bricks. “Landed in the records room, not my best entrance,” he admitted, pulling a pipe from the inside of his thick black cloak. Out under the autumn sunshine they could see it was lined in black fur, making the man appear wider in the shoulders and broader in the chest than he actually was. More Game of Thrones shit, but he was too lanky and thin to make a good Jon Snow. However, it was probably as cold as The Wall inside that garden.

Margo sat at a table under the half of the room that had a ceiling, and pulled her pink fur coat closer to fight the chill. “Aren’t you freezing?”

“Not really,” he puffed on the pipe, so much smoke exhaled it looked impossible for anything other than a vape pen. She hadn’t even seen him light it. “My people aren’t sensitive to temperatures.”

“The Dark King isn’t human,” Eliot observed, aiming for flattering as he leaned on his cane and paced the library stacks. Some corners were covered in moss, now frosted and probably molded into place. He even went as far to glance over his shoulder at the King sitting on a leather couch that had long ago splintered and cracked under the cold.

“My mother was, it’s the only thing that gave me a foothold here,” the Dark King told them candidly, following Eliot’s movements as he circled the room. “We’re from the far North, to the west of Loria. All the way out to the edge of the map.”

“The Dark Elves?” Margo sat up straight in her seat, still clutching her coat to her but eyes alight. “Really?”

“You’ve heard of us?” The Dark King smiled around the mouth piece of his pipe. “How?”

“The books, oh God I can’t remember which one. It wasn’t much written there, but I always remembered them. I wanted to know what they looked like.”

“Books?” the King proclaimed, leaning forward from his own seat in the middle of the room, intrigued once more. “You mean the children’s books from Earth? I’ve only heard stories about them.”

“Honey I’ll buy you the whole set if you help us find our friends,” Margo told him honestly. “Ship it bunny priority express.”

“Sorry, I don’t mean to break up this up,” Eliot mentioned from somewhere between them, appearing beside the Dark King and resting against the arm of the lounge seat he rested on. “But… you don’t really seem as _dark_ as we were expecting.” The Dark King took another long puff from his pipe and watched Eliot in response, soaking in the attention. “Honestly, I was expecting a fight. An old man that reminded me too much of my father, yelling and angry, all fire and brimstone.”

“Your father doesn’t sound like a pleasant man.”

“He wasn’t, rest his wretched soul. But I’m guessing you didn’t capture the entirety of Fillory with witty jokes and a charming smile.” Eliot was attempting to lay it on thick, as he would have for an attractive man such as that years ago, but his heart wasn’t in it and Margo could see that plain as day. How long before the Dark King noticed, too? Eliot didn’t need to try so hard, the King was already hand feeding them all the information they could ask for, so Margo tapped her heel against the stone floor in a jittery movement as if fighting off the cold. Her warning was heard loud and clear, and Eliot stood back up with a last half smile at the King and went to take a seat beside her at the small reading table under the broken ceiling.

“You flatter me, but no I didn’t. I’ve - mellowed, the past few decades. I’m bored, if I’m being honest, but peace keeps the magic flowing,” he grumbled irritably, puffing on the pipe a little aggressively. “So tell me, who are you looking for? Give me something to do,” he practically whined, shifting in his seat and resting his head far back over the lounge so his Adam's apple bobbed when he swallowed. Margo raised an eyebrow, staring with no shame. He actually _was_ pretty attractive for an evil Dark King, and if she leaned to the right she thought she could make out pale pointed tips on his ears beneath the black curls. A genuine smile slipped past her usual smirk. Fucking dark _elf_. The twists just kept on coming.

“The two you over-threw, actually. High King Fen and Josh the Fresh Prince,” Margo told him flat out, distracted by his royal darkness and guard lowered by his down-to-earth aurora. Her fairy eye saw the moment it changed. Originally an array of greens and purples had surrounded the King that muddied to brown so effortlessly, like the earth beneath their feet, but now it sparked blue and orange. Vivid and jarring. He didn’t show anything outwardly, just brought his pipe to his lips once more, only a little slower.

“Pickwick,” The Dark King said suddenly, calling the man they had forgotten about from the shadows. “Do you recall where I stashed them?” he drawled, a storm cloud of blues and orange like lightning forming about his shoulders. Margo clenched her jaw, eyes sliding to Eliot in a far too obvious way. She might have just fucked this up for them.

“I-I would have to check my great-great-uncle’s records, my king,” the adviser stuttered out. Tic would never have shown so much fear, he had been slimey and slick - but he’d been so effective. And loyal to Fillory. He’d have smacked his own ancestor if he’d been there with them. Margo suddenly missed that devil of a man more than she ever had. At the most careless wave of dismissal from the Dark King, Pickwick scampered out of sight and ran down the corridor to his own chambers.

Eliot cleared his throat, holding on to his composure tooth and nail in the face of the growing storm. “You don’t remember? I know it was an awful long time ago.”

“I have waged so many wars, held so many public executions, and captured so many prisoners that no - I do not remember what I did with them.” The Dark King had lost any and all flippant emotion in his voice. “The kingdom was at war when I arrived, there was much more to do and worry about. I stashed them for later, to decide their fate, but I must have forgot.” He exhaled a large cloud of smoke and Eliot grumbled something about cigarettes, which was against his healing regimen from Professor Lipson.

Margo watched the sparks of color around the Dark King carefully, how he held himself together - tightly composed now, but still appearing lax and uncaring. The mental walls were being built carefully and precisely, but he was still playing his role. The welcoming host, the iron-fisted ruler, both meshing and clashing, and to any untrained eye this would be the moment when the true Dark King started to break through that shell. But not to Margo, and not to Eliot - as he followed Margo’s intense gaze and also began to watch the elf king with the utmost scrutiny.

Not noticing the silence for a few long moments, when it became apparent the King lifted his head and looked at his two guests with a glaze of confusion and possible hostility. “What? Do I have ash on my face?”

“Are we truly alone here, your highness?” Eliot asked carefully. “Are we allowed to speak freely?”

The hostility upped a notch, but the king nodded, sitting up and knocking the burnt tobacco out of his pipe with precision. “I wish you would.”

“Good, because I don’t know very much about Dark Elves, but I’m going to guess one as young as you still doesn’t quite match up to 300 human years.” Eliot told him unflinchingly, and Margo smirked. Always on the same wave-length.

“My thoughts exactly,” she said to Eliot sweetly, patting his hand and sharing a smug smile.

“What are you talking about,” the Dark King demanded, anger sparking again - and it did look truly menacing. Probably could have been, if Eliot and Margo weren’t highly trained Magicians ready to cast at a second’s notice. All showmanship, and no one knew showmanship better than them.

“Have you ever heard about the Dread Pirate Roberts?” Margo asked in a mocking tone, and Eliot choked on an unexpected laugh, coughing quietly beside her. That alone was worth the reference.

“No, should I know him?”

“Well, no one _really_ knows him, you see,” Margo drawled as she stood and came to face the Dark King where he sat. “Because the Dread Pirate Roberts had been around for centuries, much like yourself. He always wore a mask, covering the top half of his face and head - except for those gorgeous eyes. Kind of like your _battle_ make-up you got going on. He even had your little scruff and goatee,” she said in a baby-tone and pointed to her own chin, gesturing as is ruffling the tufts of hair. “And he always appeared young, even though he was human. Human’s age very rapidly, as you know. _So_ ,” she leaned down and rested her hands on her knees so she looked the elf king in the eye. “How could he possibly have lived for so long and not aged, or stopped his pirating ways?”

The Dark King’s eyes were shocked wide, dark, and wildly panicked. He knew the answer, she could see it, and Margo smiled wide and sharp before answering in the silence.

“Because he was never one man. He was many, and the title got passed down in secret, from generation to generation.” She stood up, hands on her hips, and looking all the world like the authoritative and reigning figure of Fillory the shrinking elf had claimed for himself. “So tell me, who are you really - and where is the _real_ Dark King?”

The dark elf swallowed audibly, and Eliot smiled wide and true for the first time since he’d woken up.

-

_Brakebills South_

-

The bitter, arctic cold hit Penny so hard he felt like it physically bitch slapped him in the face.

“Jesus Christ, did he leave a fucking window open?” Penny spat, yanking his hand off Dean Fogg’s arm to pull his open sweater closed, holding in what little heat remained clinging to him from New York. They had appeared in a hallway full of windows, the same place Penny had dropped off Alice and Quentin when they went searching for the bonding spell. It was insanely tempting to peace out just like he had back then, but Fogg began making his way down the hallway towards Mayakovsky’s office without answering him.

The inside of the glass windows were frosted, fractal patterns that looked suspiciously like spell formation maps grown in the ice, and Penny stared hard at them as he followed Fogg reluctantly. There was frozen dust particles on every surface, collected in corners and dark shadowed places like snow, and Penny could now see his breath puffing in front of his face. Maybe Mayakovsky finally snapped and left Brakebills South, with all the doors and windows open out of spite. Hoping the elements would just bury it with the next snow storm. That sounded like him.

“Mischa!” Fogg barked loud and echoing down the hallway, snapping Penny’s attention back to the Dean. “Mischa, you conscious?” They entered the office, abandoned except for papers and books scattered on the floor, an overturned chair, and a broken bottle that had been there so long along with the rest of the debris it was impossible to see if it had been full or not. Everything was dusted in frost and snow, and very obviously hadn’t been touched in a while.

“I don’t think he’s here,” Penny announced. Mayakovsky reused the glass bottles to brew his own lichon vodka, he wouldn’t have just left a broken one on the floor.

“It appears so, but his tracking spell said he was still here. And alive,” Fogg ground out, although it sounded like he doubted his own spell casting in that moment. Penny couldn’t tell if he was supposed to be worried or annoyed, Fogg had about three levels of expressible emotion so they tended to group together. “Mischa!” he called again, the sound bouncing off the high ceiling but not as loud as the corridor. They both looked up to see the skylights were indeed open. “Crazy Russian bastard,” Fogg muttered as he cast a spell one-handed to close the windows, once again capturing the rising heat instead of letting it escape into the world.

“I’ll check the common room,” Penny sighed, splitting them up to cover more ground. If Mayakovsky was really there, he could be stashed in any nook and cranny with a heat spell and they’d never find him. Just as intended.

He’d made it all the way through the dorms rooms and all over the labs and common rooms when Dean Fogg appeared in the door saying his name. Penny turned from where he’d been looking under a giant pile of tied knots that could have been the perfect place to nap, and asked, “Did you find him?” Fogg shook his head and waved for Penny to follow him. “What did you find?”

“Something that might explain everything,” Fogg said. “One of his experiments backfired, and Mayakovsky isn’t himself.”

“He’s not a bear again, is he?” Penny groaned, but followed anyway along the long corridors, now beginning to warm up as all the doors and windows were now closed. They entered Mayakovsky’s office, no longer such a disorganized mess of papers and books, and Fogg went to the table to grab a piece of paper and handed it to Penny. It was covered in a spell diagram with a lot of math in the margins. It looked oddly familiar.

“This is a private project he’s been working on. A timeshare spell, Miss Quinn figured it out - and apparently forgot to mention it to me. Here,” Fogg pointed to the end of the math equation that might as well have been in Ancient Mayan to Penny, “he switched two numbers. It seems when he attempted it he accidentally traded places mentally with his future self. Further in the future than he planned, to the point he’s mentally incapable. He could have Alzheimer, for all we know.”

Penny looked over the chart as best he could, but it was beyond his years and capability. His studies had shifted entirely to traveling when he had discovered his discipline at Brakebills, and he hadn’t bothered to study much in other fields. He was able to learn them, at a fast rate, he’d been the best cram-study at Stanford during his undergraduate. He’d finished with a double major. But without putting in the time the spell pattern was a foreign obstacle his brain couldn’t make sense of. “Can we fix him?”

“I think Alice would have if it was possible,” Fogg told him. “If he’s stuck in an old body with no way of casting to switch back, he might be stuck forever. Or, maybe something he wants from the future is what is keeping him there, who knows.” He took the paper back when Penny handed it to him, examining it as well. “But I can try to find a solution to force the switch, we just have to find _him_ first.”

“Why not use a locator spell?” Penny said.

“Because he’d block it,” Fogg told him distractedly, not looking away from the paper.

“Not if he’s senile.” Fogg turned to Penny with eyes narrowed, and Penny just shrugged in response. It made sense to him.

It took Dean Fogg about 5 minutes to complete the locator spell, and looking down at the map of Brakebills South he’d pulled from Mayakovsky’s desk he stared in disbelief at what it said.

“Where is he?” Penny asked, arms crossed and waiting impatiently.

Fogg pointed to the door that led off the main office, not 12 feet from where they stood, and Penny crossed the distance in a second. Opening the door carefully, he found a tiny room that only held a bed,  lamp, and wardrobe. And there, in the small twin sized bunk, was Mayakovsky under a pile of blankets and watching him blankly. No menace or contempt in his gaze, as he remembered him, just a void stare in observation - and it was unnerving to see.

“I think we know now if he’s all there or not,” Penny said over his shoulder, and Fogg came up to see for himself. “He has to have some kind of dementia at least, my grandmother had it. It’s… not fun.”

“Oh, Mischa. What have you done this time.” Fogg brushed past Penny and came up to kneel down in front of the Russian man. Mayakovsky shrank back and stared at them like they’d been sent to steal from him.

 _“Kto ty_?” he ground out, more scared than angry, and Penny felt himself deflate even further.

“Well shit,” he groaned. “This’ll be hard.”

Fogg put a hand on Mayakovsky’s shoulder and answered him clam and quiet. “ _Ya staryy drug, poydem s nami, my ochistim tebya._ ” Then he turned to Penny with an ‘are you shitting me’ look on his face. “Did you fail Russian in your timeline?”

“I took Arabic.”

“Travelers should take all languages,” Fogg reprimanded, then motioned for Penny to come into the tiny room. “Help me get him up, he needs a bath and food.”

“You’re bathing him.” Penny proclaimed, but none the less helped sit the Russian Magician up in his bed, and thanked whoever the fuck was listening that the man was fully dressed beneath the sheets.

-

After a few hours of struggling to get the senile man in a very un-senile body clean, redressed, and fed with the sparse materials that weren’t spoiled in the school kitchens, Penny was ready to put a bit of distance between himself and Dean Fogg. He had a few years of experience with the elderly thanks to his grandmother living with them when he was a teenager, but the stubborn man refused to listen to his advice the first three times he mentioned it. It took some massive trial and error (appropriately named: ‘the bathing incident’, and ‘the clothing incident’) before he just turned over the reigns to Penny entirely. When Fogg had asked him if he would assist him with a project, the last thing Penny thought that translated to was ‘hospice caretaker’.

Mayakovsky was a lot easier to deal with, in comparison to both his former self and the Brakebills dean, so Penny soon found very little to complain about. The Russian still wasn’t speaking a speck of English, but he seemed to be able to understand Penny well enough. Letting him lead him to the dining area for soup and bread as hard as stone, where he ate without a word. In fact the only opinion he offered, very demandingly, was having vodka to drink with his meal. Some things never changed.

Once Penny got him back to his tiny bunk adjacent his office, under blankets and with a bottle of his lichen vodka cradled in his arms like a stuffed bear, the traveler let himself collapse into a chair he’d dragged in and breathed deeply for a moment. Trying to convince himself everything could be so much worse.

The small room couldn’t actually be Mayakovsky’s real bedroom, it was too tiny. More like a former supply closet with a pull-out for when he couldn’t bother to actually leave his office while working. Maybe it started like that, Penny mused, as he looked around the room shamelessly. The wardrobe did have clothes in it, moderately clean ones, and a shelf packed with books that were withering from the cold. The office outside was lined with hundreds of books, so this must have been a private collection. All were in Russian, save for three on the end, and the English lettering caught his eye. Not even having to move from his chair, Penny opened the wardrobe door wider and saw the titles fully in the sparse light. A smirk and huff of laughter escaped his lips.

“Never would have guessed,” he said to Mayakovsky, who was watching him unabashedly. Like a small child that didn’t know not to stare at strangers. His eyes darted to the wardrobe, hawk-like gaze zeroed in on Penny pulling a volume off the shelf. “Guess we’re all nerds about something.” It was a very, very old copy of _The Fellowship of the Ring_ , and flipping through it he saw the whole thing was indeed in English.

“ _Prochitya eto mne_ ,” Mayakovsky said, voice still gravely from not using it for weeks. Penny stared at him, as if he would repeat himself in a language he could understand, but Mayakovsky just stared right back. Then pointed to the book. “ _Prochitya eto mne._ ”

“This?” Penny asked. “You want this?”

“ _Nyet. Prochitya eto mne_.”

“Yeah you said that,” Penny mumbled, opening the book and looking over the sprawling map of Middle Earth on the first pages. “You, what? Want me to put it back?”

“ _Nyet! Prochitya eto!_ ”

“Read it?”

“ _Da! Slaboumnyy._ ”

“I don’t have to know Russian to tell you to watch your mouth,” Penny growled back. “I make your food and put on your socks. Be nice.” Mayakovsky just grumbled, but settled himself into his bed and continued to stare at Penny expectantly.

With a sigh, Penny flipped through the title and chapter pages, good fucking God this was a long ass book. He finally found the prologue, and cast a quick glance up at his former professor to make sure this was actually happening. Apparently it was.

“ _Concerning Hobbits_ ,” he began, and had to laugh a little. How many times had he made fun of Quentin when they were roomies for this nerdy bullshit. It sent a pang of nostalgia and grief that he quickly smothered. He cleared his throat and began again. “ _This book is largely concerned with Hobbits, and from its pages a reader may discover much of their character and a little of their history._ ” Out of the corner of his eye Penny saw Mayakovsky relax into his pile of pillows, the tension leaking from his distraught mind and body, and Penny gave in. If this was what he needed, he guessed it would be a good way to pass the time. The movies would be a lot easier to deal with, but maybe he could get away with those after reading a little while. “ _Further information will also be found in the selection from…_ ”

-

Hours later, Fogg finally came to find him. It had been dark in Antarctica for a while now, the sun only appearing for a few precious hours a day. The dean had been hard at work pouring over Mayakovsky’s rambling writings and notes spread all over the office, but he had been doing so in the lab. Penny wasn’t the only one that needed space after the trails of the morning. He hadn’t come up with much except what might have been a chronological order of the notes, which would paint the Russian Magician’s train of thought that led him to his spell in the first place. It was better than nothing, but it had been tedious and tiring. Fogg looked exhausted when he appeared in the doorway, neither of the room’s occupants noticing him right away. Penny’s reading trailing out the open door as he approached.

““ _The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places-_ ” Penny wavered at the feeling of someone behind him, turning and feeling all the knots in his back and shoulders protest as he did so. Fogg just raised an eyebrow in question.

“Tolkien?”

Penny held up the book in response, a good ways through it. “He wanted me to read it.”

“That’s good, probably for the best,” Fogg mentioned in his usual authoritative tone. “Might help ground him, even bring back some English.”

“He understands me fine,” Penny pointed out. “Just doesn’t want to converse back, which doesn’t help me.” Fogg smirked smugly, not needing to chide him again for not properly learning Russian in school. They had a few heated conversations about it over ‘the clothing incident’.

“Don’t let me stop you, was just seeing if you want food. It’s been a while.”

Penny turned back in his seat and saw Mayakovsky watching their conversation again. “You hungry?”

_“Ya mog by yest’.”_

Fogg nodded and put his hands in his pockets. “I’ll go get started on something, you two finish your chapter.” He said it in a tone that might have even been teasing, but Penny just rolled his eyes and skimmed the page looking for where he left off. Starting to read again before Fogg had even left the room.

“ _The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater._ -”

-

_The Library_

-

Demolitions started after the first week of Alice’s work at the Library. Most of the main building, where Zelda and the other executives had been housed, needed to be completely torn down and rebuilt. No amount of magic could remove the blood and carnage, the ethereal stains the monster creatures had left in their wake when they stormed the Order. It took them a week to move all the books to a temporary branch building, and all the offices cleared out in the wing they were going to begin on. They couldn’t risk damage to the books in any way, but relocating over ten thousand employees just wasn’t possible. They would have to be moved around in shifts. The executives were some of the many that stayed behind that week, which was why Alice was called almost immediately to the basement levels at the first sign of a problem.

The summons shouldn’t have shocked her as much as it did when Crissy came into her office unannounced and told her they needed her at the building foundation. But Alice’s mind had been heavily preoccupied, pouring over the short correspondence she’d been waiting days for. Disappointingly, it didn’t cover even a third of her questions.

It had taken her two full days to find Penny’s name in the Underworld employee ledger, and another half a day to even decide what to say. What was _safe_ to say, just in case the message was intercepted. No matter how much she demolished of the old Order, Alice still didn’t trust anything she’d hadn’t put her own two hands on personally. It probably made her appear paranoid, but it gave her peace of mind to have set rules and guidelines. Ones she had made herself.

She had sent a very short, formal letter to Penny letting him know that she was in charge of the Order now, and that she had questions about a soul that may have passed through his office in the past couple weeks. It was vague, but Alice knew Penny had been in charge of shelving books and evaluating categories; that he had read all their books. The new ones, after she had stolen the old ones to keep her friends hidden while Everett was in charge. He had to know about Quentin. Alice also knew he’d been promoted to Secrets Taken to the Grave. Two of the best positions to know what exactly happened to Q.

It took another two excruciating days, but she finally received a message just as short and formal.

_To: Alice Quinn_

_Congratulations on your new position, I know you’ll do great things for everyone. We need to set up a meeting about your inquiry. Let me know when accommodations are in order and we can schedule an appointment._

_Good to hear from you._

_From: Penny Adiyodi_

It was frustratingly cloak and dagger. Penny purposefully left out any information that would point towards the answers she wanted except for one: Penny wanted a meeting. He wouldn’t have said that if he didn’t have news about Quentin. Right? But what did he mean by accommodations?

“Alice?” Crissy asked again, her new boss once more absorbed in the short letter on her desk.

“Yes! Yes, I’m coming,” Alice said, standing up and smoothing down her skirt. She hadn’t changed her appearance much from what she used to wear on Earth. Her straight blonde hair and burgundy glasses left her sticking out like a sore thumb among the other librarians, but honestly that’s exactly the way she wanted it. Zelda often mentioned ordering her a new wardrobe to compliment her new stature, but Alice said she could do her own shopping and continued to wear her dresses and skirts in mod color patterns. So she could look in the mirror and still recognize herself. Baby steps.

They made their way to the elevator and took it down as far as it would go, Basement level 23. Then they had to take stairs the rest of the way, hundreds of stairs that would be a bitch and a half to take back up after they finally reached the construction crew at the bottom. It led them down another 19 levels, unfinished for the most part. Alice couldn’t believe the giant building actually went down this far. If the foundation was so deep and unstable, they could just fill in these levels to create a new foundation. She wasn’t sure what was so urgent that it needed her immediate attention.

“Finally!” A young man exclaimed as they descended the last set of steps and hit damp rock, uneven and unpolished as far as the eye could see. “You have to see this,” he told Alice, not even introducing himself before he led her across the expanse of dark stone and into the dark. Small orbs of light floated in the air and led the way, an invisible path it seemed sense there was nothing to indicate what might lay around them. All Alice could see was the dark floor stretching into the distances, and shadows of the sandstone walls that mirrored what the outside of the buildings looked like in the Neitherlands.

“Are you the foreman in charge?” Alice inquired after a few moments walking.

“Hughes, nice to meet you,” he said, turning to shake her hand but never breaking his stride. “You’re the new big man upstairs, right?”

“I’ve replaced Everett,” Alice clarified.

“Good, we need new blood. Most of the Order doesn’t actually agree with The Order, if you catch my drift,” he said with a smirk. In the dark it was hard to make out his features, but he was a little on the shorter side, with dark hair and olive skin. He looked to be about the same age as Alice and Crissy, but looks were deceiving in the Library. As was time.

Hughes stopped just short of a dark rock wall, cracked and folded up from the floor like something had burst out of it. “Don’t worry, we did this. Had to peel back the floor to get underneath.”

“What’s underneath?” Alice asked, placing a hand on the makeshift wall to peer over the edge.

“Not dirt,” Hughes told her, and pointed far, far down below them. Something blue was glowing.

Alice squinted in the dark, and it took a minute for her eyes to adjust. She wouldn’t have believed it if she hadn’t seen it herself. “That… looks like coding. What is this?” Crissy looked over her shoulder and tried to get a good look at the miles and miles of intricate lines below them. From this far up, it looked like the inside of a computer. Complete with circuit boards and networking laid out in insane patterns, all glowing a neon blue against the black. It was incredible and disturbing.

“You should’ve seen the men,” Hughes told her with a heavy huff of breath.

“The who?”

“These giant, glowing men - we tried calling to them but they didn’t even look at us. They were working on the lines and stuff down there.” Alice tried to look where he was pointing, but it was all too similar to make a distinction.

“What were they doing? Changing the code?” Alice asked, not liking the idea of beings located below their feet doing something that looked like it probably dealt with magic.

“No, it looked like they were erasing stuff.” Alice’s eyes snapped up to Hughes, who just looked right back expectantly. “That’s why I called you. I don’t know what they are or what they’re doing, but removing stuff can’t be good.”

“No,” Alice agreed. “It can’t.” She looked at the network below her carefully, memorizing complex patterns, and hoping for something to appear out of the edges of her vision. So she could see the monsters for herself. But nothing appeared, so she leaned back and caught Hughes attention directly. “If they show up again, message for me immediately; I want to see them. Also sketch out what they look like for reference, if you can. Crissy,” she turned to her assistant. “We have more materials to expedite. I have a lot of research to do. Let’s go.” With one last look at the glowing circuit board, she turned on her heel and led the way back across the dark underground.

She’d expected more secrets to reveal themselves when she took over, but this was a larger scale than she’d planned on. What more could be hidden in the worlds that made up the universe? What else did she not know about?

No matter what, this whole place was her responsibility now: and Alice would do whatever she could to keep it afloat.

-

_Fillory_

-

The false Dark King ushered Eliot and Margo into his chambers quickly, herding them like stowaways and slamming the door shut before any guards noticed them. Even going so far as to lock it with a heavy iron bar that clanked into place rather loudly. He then traced a circle on the door with his finger at about eye level, and some indiscernible symbols in the center of it, which lit up a pattern that spread out and continued to do so in blanket fractal pattern until it swept across the walls in waves of dark light and disappeared into the stone.

“No one can hear us now,” he told them in a high, breathless tone that leeched any amount of sinister meaning to the phrase. He whipped around with unconcealed franticness, shucked the heavy fur coats he wore and tossing them carelessly onto a chair, tousling his hair nervously as if to help himself focus. “And nothing we say here can leave this room.”

“Obviously,” Margo assured him, taking a seat on one of the vanity lounges and removing her own pink fur coat. A roaring fire warmed the room from the hearth that spanned one entire wall of the chamber. Overly extravagant and one of it’s best features for the High King’s personal rooms. “You going to tell us who you are now? Or who the Dark King really is?”

The dark elf glared at Margo, as if she wasn’t taking into account how serious the situation is. “I _am_ the Dark King, I have been for the past 100 years, I’m just not the original Dark King.”

“And he is - dead, I assume?” Eliot asked, lowering himself to the vanity beside Margo with careful ease. Margo could hear his tight exhales of breath, betraying his pain and she pursed her lips in agitation. She _knew_ he’d been pushing himself too hard the past few days.

“What? No, of course not,” the Dark King snapped, manic dark eyes darting between the two former High Kings. “He’s on holiday. A very… permanent holiday, it seems. I don’t blame him, I wanted to pull my hair out after the first few decades. But I figured we’d trade out to someone else so I could fucking go home.” Eliot and Margo exchanged surprised glances openly, before turning back to the pacing King. His semi-medieval vocabulary and tone had disappeared like he’d broken character.  “I mean, you two ditched for 300 years! You must know how awful this place is.”

“While it is insanely tiring at the best of times, believe it or not we actually missed it,” Eliot told him with a flourish of his hand. Leaning back in the vanity to release some of the pressure on his abdomen and back, but in a motion that made him appear to be lounging without a care. Margo would have been impressed if she hadn’t been so angry at how much Eliot was still keeping from her. “And we were overthrown as well.” This Eliot said to her, flippant and conversational. Her returning smile could have cut stone.

“But we made it back to the top,” she pointed out pridefully, turning a smug smile to the Dark King. “I won the public election, landslide from the talking animals.”

“Yes, yes, it’s been brought up many times by my advisers, quaint but impressive. I might even remember it being mentioned when it happened,” the Dark King muttered, dragging a lavish arm chair to face the vanity and flopping down into it in a boneless heap. “I was just a child back then.”

“What, so you _are_ 300 years old?” Margo challenged in a tone that did not hide her annoyance or disbelief.

“I forget the math, human years are confusing.”

“What’s your name,” Eliot asked instead, placing a hand on Margo’s knee to remind her why they were there. The shift to sit up and do so seemed to take more effort than she was comfortable with.

His pipe had appeared lit and back in his hand from no where once again, thick tobacco smoke spiraling up in agitated puffs as the elf inhaled from the mouthpiece like an oxygen feed. “Avenadiel, Ave is fine,” he added with a wave of his hand that held the pipe, the other was across his eyes as if he was attempting another slight-of hand magic that could make them disappear. “When he finds out you know the truth I’m as good as dead, and dead in _Fillory_. What a waste.”

“You mean the Dark King? Who is he?” Margo pressed, despite Eliot’s attempts to reign her back.

“I don’t know! He looks human, but he never ages. Even I age faster than him - and he’s powerful. No ordinary being can make it to our lands up North and return to tell the tale. The journey is horrendous.” Ave had a tendency to say things in tones that had them mean something else entirely, he sounded so proud when he talked of the secluded home he hadn’t seen in a century. Horrendous never sounded so sturdy and elegant.

“Is he still in Fillory?” Margo asked in persistence, not letting up while the man was spilling all the state secrets.

Ave’s attention snapped to them in an instant. “Why? You don’t mean to go to him?”

“Bet your dark elvish ass,” Margo said dead serious.

“You can’t!”

“Oh we can,” Margo told him. “If anyone is going to know what happened to Josh and Fen, it’s that prick. I’m going to have a _long_ chat with him.”

Ave looked at her like she’d grown another head. “He’ll kill you.”

“Let him fucking try,” Margo could feel the fortitude of her decision like fire in her veins. This was her damn home. Her kingdom. She fought tooth and nail for it, bled for it, was branded and banished from it in order to save one of the only other things in the world she cared that much about. And after the past few weeks, nothing short of The Beast himself returning to finish them off would stop her from saving the other assholes she loved and cared about. Even then, she’d probably punch the fucker in the face.

“Believe me, she’ll be fine,” Eliot told Ave, ever the mediator, as he attempted to push himself to his feet with his cane for support. Margo helped him wordlessly, not mad enough to add to his self-suffering shit. “We just need a direction.”

“I can’t send you there,” Ave shook his head, abandoning his pipe to let it burn and sizzle on it’s own, smoke trailing between them like a miniature fire signal. “I can’t, not in good conscience. You’re just getting yourselves killed for no good reason.”

“No one - is dying anytime soon,” Eliot said so tightly contained his voice betrayed him, shaking on a breath where he left out one word. No one _else_. “And especially not for any specific reason, good or otherwise.” The bitterness couldn’t be hidden; not by Eliot adjusting his coat sleeves, or how he cleared his throat to shake the emotion from clogging it once more. Grief forever snagged up in his chest like a bad cold - and just as terribly brushed aside. “So tell us, where is he on holiday, and what can we bring to crash the party.” The raised eyebrow was almost so in character, old Eliot fully embodied from head to toe, that Margo nearly missed how blank his stare was beneath the mask. Sleepless smudges still bruising his eyes, dark eyelashes hiding the only crack in his facade. Eliot was dead on his feet, and still suffering at the slightest reference to the death of Quentin Coldwater. There were some parts of his death, suspected but not proven parts, that not even she and Eliot could talk out. Once it was spoken, they couldn’t take it back.

He didn’t show anything outwardly, but something about the juxtaposition in Eliot even bothered the Dark King from where he sat. He stared at Eliot long enough, and with something that might have been concern, Margo almost got to her feet to step between them - then Ave answered them. Or Eliot, at least. “The Wellspring. It doesn’t work anymore, but he stays out there doing whatever research or witchcraft that pleases him.” Ave slowly stood, coming up to Eliot and not looking away. “Weapons won’t work against him, your magic might not either, so if you bring anything - bring a way to escape. With your lives, if you can.”

Eliot nodded, finally bringing his cane from where it hung in the crook of his elbow, and brandishing his arm - Margo materializing into view to take it possessively and glare at the Dark Elf King. She did _not_ like being ignored, but Eliot got the answers they needed in the end. She wasn’t going to let this prick forget her when they left, even though she was more than sure he’d spend their entire retreat watching Eliot’s ass.

“Thank you, Ave,” Eliot said in the following silence, leaving a little emphasis on his name - to flatter him or insult him, it worked both ways. “We will return soon, I’m sure.” The promise could have been framed as flirtatious, but Eliot had lost all trace of that tone - their quest had finally made itself known, and they had a lot of ground to cover. Margo continued to stare Ave down as Eliot led the way out of the chambers, until they faced the barred and spelled door. Eliot hung his cane once more on his arm that was locked with hers, and in tandem they raised their free hands, bent fingers and made motions completely in sync, and with a final slicing motion the bar cut in half - red hot at the incision. It clattered to the floor along with the shattered silencing spell, the fractal patterns falling to the stone like glass and dissolving after impact.

Eliot took hold of his cane once again, Margo opened the door, and they exited arm in arm without looking back at the man in charge of their kingdom.

-

The Wellspring was deep in the Fillorian forest, almost a day’s walk to the NorthWest of Whitespire. Under normal circumstances, they would have made it in time for dinner. But with Eliot’s wound still hurting him it would take them until nightfall at the earliest. He couldn’t ride a horse in his condition, even the talking ones that would know to be careful with him, and the royal carriage apparently no longer recognized them as royalty. So that left them with the shoes on their feet and the momentum from exiting Whitespire just as proud and elegant as they entered it. They knew the way without maps, plenty of memories of going to the little shack in the woods would hold up even after all the time that had passed. Not the greatest of memories, but ones that would never be forgotten. Except for one, tiny obstacle.

 _Someone_ was insisting on another long, arborous detour. Again.

“We should go to the centaurs first,” Eliot said for the hundredth time, dragging his feet as they made their way down the worn in dirt roads that spiraled through all the forests to the North. Margo probably thought it was because he was trying to earn more time to convince her to put off the Wellspring another day, but it was also because this much walking felt like it was _literally_ killing him. “I’m no help to you like this.”

“You don’t know that they _can_ help, El,” Margo insisted in annoyance, still walking arm in arm like they were merely on a stroll through the palace gardens and not a million mile hike to hunt down a Dark King. The _real_ Dark King. She had to know Eliot’s reason was sound, the centaurs could literally make bones out of wood! Even if they were all elitist, Aryan-esque assholes that put being up on a “high horse” to a whole other irritating level. They both despised them from days as High King, it was always on the agenda and never really resolved; they were too fucking useful. “I never decided on a word for being racist against humans. Species-ist? If I call them Nazis they won’t understand the reference-”

“Margo, Bambi, look at me,” Eliot interrupted her in a strained voice, fuck he was in pain. He stopped in the middle of the road to gently take hold of Margo’s shoulders and turn her towards him, have her look him in the eye and for once see how bad a shape he was in. “Listen. I need this, I can’t keep going like this. I’m still too injured to do anything, and if what Ave said is true you need someone who can cast using both hands without falling over.” Margo opened her mouth to retort but Eliot put a finger to her lips and barreled on. “I _need_ this. I need… to be able to help the few people we have left - to help you - and I can’t do that when I can barely stand. Taking this long to heal does nothing for anyone, not when it might be able to be fixed in an instant. If it could have, a lot of things would be different, and we could go riding in like the beautiful, strong King you are and you could save your-”

“El,” Margo pleaded, quiet and careful. Eliot’s ramble had started to get frantic and betray a few things she hadn’t thought about at all. Eliot had been unconscious for almost 2 days after he had been freed of the monster, didn’t wake until over a day had passed since Quentin was killed. He couldn’t possibly _blame_ himself for that. “You - there was nothing you could have done.”

“We don’t know that, and we never will,” Eliot placated. “But I don’t intend on it happening ever again, either.” He brushed a strand of long curls behind Margo’s ear, cupping her neck and holding on in a gesture that always helped ground him in the person in front of him. His heart jumped to his throat when he thought of the last person he had done it to. “I can’t lose you, too.”

Margo reached up and held Eliot’s hand where it touched her neck and jaw. “I’m not going anywhere. I can promise that, Eliot. And we’re not going to lose anyone else either.” She moved in to put her head on his chest just as he pulled her close, wrapping long arms around her and hugging her as if she’d slip away if he didn’t. She could feel the slight tremble in his stance, whether from the strain of standing or his emotions - it didn’t matter. He was right, he needed rest. It took a lot for him to admit it, so she should take advantage of that before he spiraled down again.

The two were so wrapped up in themselves they didn’t even hear the clop of horse shoes on the road behind them until a voice cleared their throat in the quiet.

“Could you move to one side so I can pass?” An old, raspy voice of a woman announced. “I hate to break up your moment.” Margo and Eliot parted a small bit to look behind them at the black and white paint attached to a rickety cart, the horse’s nose not a few inches from them. It huffed an annoyed breath that ruffled Eliot’s hair, and grumbled something unintelligible but undoubtedly rude.

“Sorry,” Eliot told the horse, letting Margo help lead him to the side before finally looking at the cart driver to do the same, and he faltered. “Hey, wait - do we know you?” There was something familiar about the old woman’s round face, hair short and curled and maybe a bit more white than the memory he held of when he’d seen her last, but under the canopy of overhanging branches and swaying trees her face was definitely one he remembered. Vague and wispy like cobwebs.

With a tilt of her head, the woman examined them with a hard and probing stare before shaking her head. “I don’t think we made any deals, Children of Earth, and I would remember saving someone in such rich fabrics.”

 _My friends don’t need saving_ . Eliot heard Quentin’s voice in his head and it stalled his heart, his breath caught in his chest and snagged there. No, no he remembered her face, and her voice. It was coming to him more clear and vivid than he ever remembered experiencing it. _You’re in Fillory, Magician. Be careful with strangers._ “We only look whimsical,” Eliot recited, not sure where it was all coming from, but it felt so important his fingers shook. The woman in the cart, a hair's-breadth away from cracking the reigns, stopped just as suddenly.

“What did you say?”

“You were there the day we fought The Beast, the first time,” Eliot exclaimed, more to Margo than to the old woman. “The local, the one that Q brought to help us.” The delayed reaction of saying his name out loud hit like a bullet to gut, and Eliot leaned heavily on his cane, swaying from the impact. Margo held him up as best as her small frame could.

Boots hit the dirt as the woman jumped from her cart, coming to them and taking Eliot’s other side to help Margo hold him up. “You’re dead on your feet, come with me. You can rest at my cottage before you go on your way. I have a feeling we have much to talk of.”

“I’m right, aren’t I?” Eliot pressed, letting himself be man-h... or woman-handled up onto the wide driver’s bench of the cart. “We know you, Quentin knew you.”

“Oh yes, the King and I had some dealings years ago,” she said as she Margo climbed up and bracketed Eliot on the bench, Eliot leaning heavily on Margo with his arm around her shoulders. The ride was going to be a bumpy, unpleasant one for him. “Never produced anything for me, but that may remain to be seen,” she looked at Margo and Eliot beside her, something fantastical and slightly worrying sparking in her dark eyes. “Remains to be seen, indeed.” Then she cracked the whip, and the horse started clopping down the road complaining the whole way about picking up strays and the lack of thanks one receives for being a good samaritan.

Something about the small smirk on the old woman’s face said that there would be nothing of the sort happening in what awaited them at the cottage.

-

_Hedgewitch Headquarters (Kady’s Penthouse)_

-

In the end, Professor Li actually pointed Julia and Kady towards Darsha anyway. She had a good, rounded view of how different cultures practiced their magic; had even joked to him about writing a dissertation on it. And in all his knowledge studies, which focused on concept theory of complex spells and their physical creation - instead of their source - he hadn’t come across near what she could offer. They did stop by Keiko first, a Japanese woman in her early 30’s who was developing the hedgewitch equivalent of stocks and insider trading. She did seem to know everything about everyone, but again nothing concrete in finding an alternative source for Julia to use to tap into her magic.

“Next time, trust your first instinct,” Darsha told Kady with a small smile. She was a gorgeous woman not too much older than them, wrapped in vibrant blue and green sari that framed her face beautifully and did nothing to hide the $300 headset draped around her neck. Or the Ravenclaw house stickers taped to the sides. She’d been online with seven different countries just that morning, but she was still so down-to-earth and welcoming when Kady came up and mentioned the information they were looking for. “Sit down, make yourself comfortable,” she told them both as she scooted over on the couch to make room.

“Do you think you can help me?” Julia asked, sitting down next to her with Kady draped over the arm of the couch beside her.

“Well it depends on what you can personally accomplish,” Darsha told her simply. “But I think I can. We just have to find a method of practice that works for you.” She smiled and quickly drew Julia into a complex description of the way of the magical world. “So you’re trained in the American system. Which is very similar to the British and other European systems, where you use your own personal pain and past to help spark your magic. Where as in Russia, they use a discipline system that’s particularly rigorous.”

“Yeah, no shit,” Kady mumbled over Julia’s shoulder. “All Brakebills students study under Mayakovsky, he lives at the South Pole and if you don’t pass his examination you get kicked out.”

“Really? Mayakovsky?” Darsha said in astonishment. “You don’t realize how lucky you are, I did my thesis in Mumbai about him.”

“He’s a drunk asshole.”

“Drunk, asshole, genius. Most famous men are,” Darsha pointed out dismissively. “But you know first hand what the Russian and East European countries use. Another example, Japan uses discipline as well but with a focus in suppressing emotion. The exact opposite of what the American system uses.”

“Why do you think that is?” Julia questioned, completely enthralled with Darsha’s lecture.

“Well, here’s my reigning theory,” Darsha gushed, sitting up and reseating herself to face Julia and Kady more, grinning in excitement. “The key to all of these different methods is that your strongest emotions, the ones that have memories or experiences tied to them, are focused and pooled together. Japan does this the best, as does Korea, where they focus on feeling no emotions whatsoever - to clear their mind to cast perfectly. But when they do this, they pile all of their emotions into one corner of their mind; somewhere that it won’t be in the way - and effectively make a power source. In Russia, they learn to channel everything they feel during the disciplinary frustration into conquering their magic, and in England and America you keep the worst parts of your past held tightly in your mind. If you never let them go, then you have a power source as well. We all need that power source.

“You see - magic is something that we use, that we channel through our own bodies, but it exists outside of ourselves. I proved that when we had the shortages. If it was something inside us, we would generate it instead of run out of it.”

“So you think there’s a chance I could do the same, but not have to focus on the bad things?” Julia said with her mouth slightly open. Eyes distant already thinking of different possibilities.

“It’s possible, I haven’t been able to test it on a range of different emotions. I could use you as a guinea pig, oh - that is, if you don’t mind,” Darsha prompted, a little embarrassed at her eagerness to have a test subject.

“What do they do in India?” Kady asked, leaning into Julia’s space to better hear the conversation. A big group connection session had started across the coffee table from them that was getting a little loud and rowdy. She also waved to Pete to come simmer it down, the man materializing out of wherever he was lurking to put himself in the middle of the group. Julia smirked a bit at how well the two of them were able to keep the controlled chaos moving and operating so smoothly. It was impressive.

“They use a method that was actually adapted from Buddhism,” Darsha explained. “Mumbai is primarily Islamic and Hindi, but Buddhism has a great presence in our part of the world. Similar to the Asian cultures, they use meditation to clear the mind. But instead of pushing everything aside, or letting the internal feels go - as they do in actual Buddhism practices, giving themselves to the universe and nature - the meditation is used to look inward. Before magic is cast and channeled, you must first journey inward to find your true source. What is your strongest emotion, and in that you will find an everlasting pool to tap into and continue your studies.” Darsha managed to look a little shamed before she continued. “I will admit, many Magicians do find that their strongest emotions or memories are negative ones. Which is why the method has worked for so long in Western cultures. But that doesn’t mean it has to be your only option.”

With a heavy sigh, breathing deep through her nose and letting it out to release the tense anticipation that had held her tight the whole discussion, Julia thought back through all of what Darsha told her. “So, part two of your theory,” Julia ventured, “seems to be that someone could have more than one useable source, to spark their magic. If I look deep enough, I could find something that would work just as well as what I’ve been using.”

“Not as well,” Darsha admitted. “You would be going for a second or third option. There’s a high possibility that you won’t be as strong as you would be using the negative parts of your past.”

“But there’s nothing saying that I won’t be. Or that I can’t train it to be as strong,” Julia continued in blind optimism. Darsha shrugged, but Kady could tell she was just being kind. Something in her eyes said that Julia’s denial could hurt her in the long run.

“It might take time, if it does happen,” Kady pointed out, catching Darsha’s gaze and nodding that she understood. “But we won’t get anywhere without trying. Can you teach her the meditation she needs?”

“I’m not the most adept for it, but I was planning on returning to Mumbai this week. You two should come with me,” Darsha offered, smiling again. “Plus, we’re having a big meeting at the University. Your United Nations analogy might actually be coming true. We could use an American ambassador.”

“Count me in” Kady smirked, throwing an arm over the back of the couch as she slid into the spot beside Julia. “We can pop back to Brakebills and get your stuff whenever, as long as Fogg lets you go.”

“I think at this point I’m going to be dropping out for the semester,” Julia commented airily. “Or forever. Who needs a Masters Degree anyway.”

“If you need a job, sounds like we have a hundred positions about to open up,” Kady said. “This is getting much bigger than I thought it would be, but I’m not sorry about it.”

“Good, you shouldn’t be,” Julia insisted. “And I’d be happy to stay and be apart of it. This is going to open so many doors.” Her eyes were lost in the possibilities again, grinning at what she was going to learn and discover, at what lay on the horizon. She turned from Kady back to Darsha, who had a soft smile on her face that she schooled in an instant. “When do we leave?”

“Day after tomorrow,” Darsha beamed back. “So you better get a move on. Hope you both have a passport.”

-

_Brakebills South_

-

It took Henry Fogg almost two weeks to finally make heads or tails of Mayakovsky’s handiwork, in fact around the 10 day marker - in a fit of madness - he tried an over-simplified version of a reversal spell. He rushed to Mayakovsky’s cupboard room where Penny had been resident caretaker (not what Fogg had in mind when he asked the young man for his assistance, but it worked all the same) and personal audiobook to the Russian Magician. He made it just in time for Gandalf the White to come riding down the slope of Helm’s Deep to save Rohan from Isengard’s armies. If he didn’t know any better, he’d think the traveler was enjoying the novels just as much as Mayakovsky.

In the evenings, when Mayakovsky slept, still on some strange time schedule from what Fogg only assumed was a nursing home, Penny became a soundboard to Fogg in his search for a way to reverse the timeshare spell. Slowly evolving into a colleague, or apprentice, instead of his student. Penny of timeline 23 hadn’t been his student in a long time. Fogg remembered every single one, and with all those lifetimes in between it created enough distance for the two to work side by side with less awkwardness than the Penny of his timeline.

Fogg was so tired of losing his students. To the one place he couldn’t seem to reach. He never remembered his deaths, or what was beyond, just the repetitive loop he could never escape.

About 10 or 11 at night, respectively, Mayakovsky usually showed up to fetch Penny. Holding the novel they were currently reading like a toddler demanding just one more bedtime story before they slept for good. Penny usually obliged one more chapter, and Fogg sometimes even sat in the adjacent office with the door open between them. Just to hear the story and not pay attention to the work spread out on the table.

He attempted a good number of failed spells after his breakthrough, until the end of the second week rolled around and he had a plausible spell that should have pulled Mayakovsky towards the switch. Or at least given him a tug and let him know that someone was waiting for him on the other side. Nothing earth-shattering happened once it was completed, and he heard no exclamations from down the hall, so he sighed and went in search of Penny and Mayakovsky once more - ready for a much needed break. He was used to the spells failing, but he had been so sure it would work this time.

-

“ _‘Yes’, said Gandalf; ‘for it will be better to ride back three together than one alone. Well, here at last, dear friends, on the shores of the Sea comes the end of our fellowship on Middle-earth. Go in peace! I will say: do not weep, for not all tears are an evil._ ’” Penny turned the final page, something heavy in his chest that he didn’t feel like examining too closely. He knew it had nothing to do with the story, which he had never actually read and only vaguely remembered from the movies, but he could feel a nerdy smile from some dick in his past he used to room with chuckle at him in his memories. He kept reading, hoping not to falter again as he felt Mayakovsky’s intense gaze - knowing it was the end.

“ _And the ship went out into the High Sea and passed on into the West, until at last on a night of rain Frodo smelled a sweet fragrance on the air and heard the sound of singing that came over the water. And then it seemed to him that as in his dream in the house of Bombadil, the grey rain-curtain turned all to silver glass and was rolled back, and beheld white shores and beyond them a far green country under a swift sunrise._ ” An intense guilt roiled in his throat, making Penny have to clear it before he could read another word. He knew for a fact that the afterlife existed, that there was an underworld, and that Alice Quinn had said Quentin was robbed of it. He couldn’t help thinking over everything Fogg had told him, in his office about Quentin’s suicidal past and how it had haunted him to his dying day. Penny couldn’t put himself in Q’s shoes in that aspect; when he wanted an escape he ran - as far as he could. There was nowhere that he couldn’t go and leave whatever was chasing him in the dust. But was this what Quentin had hoped for? An everlasting peace in a grey haven where everything about the real world melted away, where it wouldn’t matter. And now that he was gone, he didn’t even get that.

“ _But to Sam the evening deepened to darkness as he stood at the Haven: and he looked at the grey sea he saw only a shadow on the waters that was soon lost in the West._ ” Flashes of that day, of Q’s face when he realized the consequences of what he’d done - that he could try to get away but that would put him closer to Penny and Alice and they could get caught in the backfire. “ _There still he stood far into the night, hearing only the sigh and murmur of the waves on the shores of Middle-earth, and the sound of them sank deep into his heart._ ” Penny didn’t remember feeling as much emotion when it happened, dragging Alice out of the door and away to the exit of the Mirror World, but he could still see it all in slow motion. Frame by frame. Like he had simply stood there and watched it happen. “ _Beside him stood Merry and Pippin, and they were silent._ ”

That’s how it should be. The others needed the song at Q’s memorial fire. Penny needed silence, and time, to let him go and say goodbye. He only realized, as he paused his reading, that he never really gave himself that chance.

“You alright?” Penny turned to Fogg standing behind him, leaning against the door. He hadn’t heard the man come in, nor did he notice Mayakovsky sit up in his cot when he stopped reading.

“Yeah, I’m good,” Penny answered, not bothering to elaborate. He picked up where he left off, only a few paragraphs left in the final novel, and Fogg stayed where he was for the rest of the book. All the way back to Hobbiton and Samwise Gamgee’s home.

“ _...And on he went, and there was a yellow light, and fire within: and the evening meal was ready, and he was expected. And Rose drew him in, and set him in his chair, and put little Elanor upon his lap._

 _He drew a deep breath. ‘Well, I’m back,’ he said._ ” Penny stared at the final page, not sure what to do with an ending like that. He had spoken it like it wasn’t final, like there was a continuation waiting to happen. But that was the final line of The Lord of the Rings trilogy he’d been reading aloud for two weeks. He closed the book, and finally came back to himself when he saw Mayakovsky put his feet on the floor.

“It has been a long time since those books have been opened,” Mayakovsky said in perfect English, rubbing at his face and looking around him. He found the bottle of lichon vodka that had barely been touched except for meal times, and pulled the cork out with his teeth before taking a swig.

Fogg slapped the doorframe and laughed in triumph. “I _knew_ that damn spell would work. Goddamn it Mischa, what took you so long?”

“You made me read all those books before you came back,” Penny glared at him accusingly. “How long have you actually been you?” Fogg stopped his victory party to also stare at Mayakovsky, who smirked proudly.

“Oh, just now - truly. I’m glad you found the books.”

“Which books, these books?” Fogg insisted, agitated, pointing at the _Return of the King_ still in Penny’s hand. “Did the damn books call you back, or did my spell?”

“Who knows,” Mayakovsky said dully, digging a rocks glass out of nowhere to pour some vodka in the glass like a civilized person. “The real question is, why are you two here?” He pointed at them with the hand holding the bottle, sipping from his tumbler like it was merely water.

With an aggravated sigh, Fogg crossed his arms and glared at the other professor as if he was just another pestering student. “I came here for you, actually. To help fix something I had broken.”

“If you had helped all those years ago, it would not be something broken in need of fixing,” Mayakovsky glared right back, and Penny just lulled his head back so he could roll his eyes at the ceiling. He wasn’t going to get clued in on whatever they were talking about until days later, at this rate.

“I am in the mood to mend bridges, Mischa, you should take it while you can,” Fogg said through gritted teeth.

“And what brings about this change of heart, hm?” Mayakovsky taunted. “And why is he with you.” He pointed at Penny this time, who was 100% done with being talked over.

“I needed a vacation. I had so much fun the first time I figured I’d come back,” Penny told him in deadpan sarcasm. After his trip down memory lane he needed a 10 hour nap, and probably a real vacation - before Fogg revealed what he actually wanted his help with. The Bahamas sounded nice.

Mayakovsky was watching him, and took a gulp of vodka that actually made him grimace as he finished the glass. “Something happened, what is with the face. Who died?”

They both knew it was just an expression, but it sobered up Dean Fogg and Penny in an instant.

“A student,” Fogg answered, hands in his pockets and having the decency to look somber about it.

“Which one?”

“Quentin,” Penny said this time. They weren’t going to talk about him like some tragic story they read in the paper, not when all of them had known him for quite some time. “Quentin is dead.”

The blank stare Mayakovsky sported was enough to reveal how hard the information had hit him. “Was it my spell that killed him?” he asked. Alice and Quentin had come to get the cooperative spell, it was remarkable Mayakovsky even remembered since it had happened in the past. But Penny had long ceased being surprised by the master Magician.

Penny wasn’t going to go into detail after basically reliving it, so Fogg filled in during his hesitation. “No, it was what happened after.”

“That is a shame.” Mayakovsky leaned on his knees and scrubbed his face. “When you sent him to me he was not best student. Deserved a D-, eh, D+. But if he completed the spell I gave him, and managed to fix my timeshare spell, he grew more than anticipated. B-.” He said it to the room, like a blessing to the deceased.

“Alice Quinn was with him,” Fogg added.

“C-.”

Fogg went on to summarize what Mayakovsky had missed, with the Library regulations and the battle with the monstrous creatures that almost destroyed humanity. Mayakovsky only interrupted once to point out that his timeshare spell would not have worked for him if there had been no humanity in the future, and Alice should have realized that. But he stayed silent, not even drinking, while they described what his incorporate bond was actually used for. How they managed to generate that much power.

“Kady was able to get all the hedgewitches from across the globe, as well as the Brakebills faculty and some other covert parties, to complete the spell all at the same time.” Fogg said with a hint of smugness in his voice.

“Really? Cooperative spell?” Mayakovsky looked genuinely intrigued.

“I’m still not quite sure how she managed it.” Fogg admitted, and Mayakovsky whistled in appreciation and agreement.

“Sultry but damaged did well, very impressive.”

Penny narrowed his eyes in confusion “What?”

“Tis nickname,” Mayakovsky stretched as he said it, and Penny could only vaguely remember that he did do that to most of the students.

“What was mine?” He wasn’t sure if they’d had time during traveler training.

“ _You_ do not have one,” Mayakovsky said loudly and serious. “You are not from this timeline.” Penny gaped and Fogg sputtered, about to intervene because - the fuck? “Is obvious. You even dress different, less skin.” Penny was pretty sure his face was about to get stuck in this permanent scrunch of disbelief. “So I shall call you… 22?”

“I hope you’re not guessing my age.”

“NO not your age. You think I care? Your timeline.” Mayakovsky emphasized, picking up the bottle and materializing a few more glasses from somewhere under his twin bed.

“23.”

“Eh close, I get those two muddied up.” Fogg stepped into the room just as Mayakovsky stood from his bed with his hands full of drinking supplies. He had a vein throbbing in his temple, and Penny made sure to give them a _lot_ of space as he scooted himself and the chair he sat in out of the room.

“You remember,” Fogg ranted. “How the fuck do you remember?”

Mayakovsky had a shit-eating grin plastered on his unshaven face. “Oh yes. Every one. You would think I would not be stuck here each time. Yet here we are.”

“So you’re just a pervert always.” Penny commented from his seat.

“Not always.” He pointed at Penny. “But I do break rules. That is why I am great Magician. The world is made to be broken, magic or no, it is a Magician who has power to put it back together. His way.”

“That was _almost_ inspiring,” Fogg said.

Mayakovsky turned his head to glare at the dean, not a foot between them. “You never appreciated me.”

He exited the room still in lounge clothes and dumped the vodka and glasses on the table, proceeding to pour some into each. “Now we drink.”

“You just woke up!” Penny exclaimed.

Mayakovsky just handed him a glass. “For Mister Coldwater.”

“But - we’ve already had his vigil, it was weeks ago,” Penny said, looking at the vodka in his hands and not sure how the day had changed so drastically so quickly.

“But _I_ have not. So, imbibe with me,” Makayovsky handed Fogg a glass as well, cradling his own that had about twice as much vodka in it. “Plus, you never stop paying respects to the dead, not the ones that matter.”

He raised the glass, and paused while trying to think of something to say. Penny knew the feeling well, he hadn’t known what to say at the first vigil either. Or the following weeks. Maybe there really wasn’t anything that was deserving of Quentin Coldwater.

“Did he go doing something brave, or something stupid,” Mayakovsky asked, almost careful in his words.

The half smile that quirked Penny’s face was bitter and fond and hurt a little to hold. “A bit of both.”

Mayakovsky nodded. “As do all good men who die young. _Vechnaya pamyat._ ” He toasted them in the air, and drained the entirety of his glass. Penny didn’t know what the Russian toast meant, he’d never heard it said before, but he had a feeling that it was more meaningful than anything he could’ve ever come up with in English.

His glass was refilled as soon as he drained it, as was Fogg’s, and Mayakovsky emptied the rest of the bottle into his own tumbler - only to look up to twin stares from his guests. “What? You think that is it? What kind of friend were you?” He placed the empty bottle on the table and glared at them in turn. “I barely liked him. He’s worth at least one bottle, possibly two, not counting what you two drink.” As if to prove his point he drained his glass again, and then waved to them. “Come, come. More vodka in my office. We have all night.”

-

_Fillory_

-

“Is that… candy?” The cart pulled up to the shaded cottage deep in the woods, surrounded by a sprawling garden so loud with color that they at first thought it was in full bloom of giant flowers. But indeed, the bushes and trees, towering fence and crowded flower beds, were littered with various candies and sweets.

“Jesus fuck, she’s going to eat us,” Margo groaned, already preparing to grab Eliot and fucking drag him as soon as they could jump from the cart.

“What kind of horrid tale is this? Your King friend wouldn’t even approach my cottage because of it. A witch that lives in a house of candy, that _eats_ people...” the old woman chuckled and shook her head at the absurdity as she steered the cart to the front door, then hopped down to detach the grumpy horse. “I’m not here to eat you,if that needs to be said -  I have plenty of food, as you can see.” She patted the horse on the rump to get it moving, then waited patiently as Margo and Eliot unloaded themselves from the cart. “So? Are you going to run?” she asked jokingly, “I was hoping for help bringing my market goods inside. Not from you,” she pointed to Eliot who still leaned heavily on his cane. “You sit down before you fall down.” She shooed Eliot towards the cottage door, who took almost as long to walk up the winding cobble path as Margo and the witch did to unload the cart.

Inside it was dark and warm, and smelled faintly of caramel, with the majority of the single room filled with a work table that housed an honest-to-god cauldron. Books and vials and pickled objects filled the shelves that lined every wall, and the thatched roof was so long hanging Eliot had to stoop in places. He was ushered into a chair, and the witch put on a kettle for tea. She instructed Margo on where to place the goods brought in, and spent a few minutes grinding up herbs and ingredients neither human looked too closely at. She insisted it would help ease the ache in Eliot’s bones, and make the rest of their journey to the centaur’s forest a little easier on him.

“How’d you know?” Eliot questioned as he took the offered steaming cup that smelled like butterscotch and cherry tootsie-pops.

“With how injured you are, it’s hardly a psychic guess,” the witch chided, sitting down at another chair in front of the fire with her own cup. Margo perched herself on an ottoman meant for the arm chair Eliot occupied, and eyed her tea cup like it had a lizard in it. “You Children of Earth have been gone so long, only something that serious must have brought you back.”

“We didn’t intend to be gone so long,” Eliot tried to explain. “Time moves differently on Earth, but we did come back to stay this time.” He had no intention of going back to Earth, there was nothing left for him there. No reason to stay. Finally Eliot took a sip of his steaming concoction and almost immediately felt the pain ease as warmth swept through him. “Damn, that’s… that’s very good.”

“Thank you,” the witch smiled secretly, making Margo narrow her eyes in suspicion. “I’ve learned that the things I grow in my garden work the best for my spells and potions, something about the labor and time put into them. Most other ingredients, while potent, are rather useless to me without a specific need. For that there must be someone to bargain with, and you two are the first I have seen in my forest in almost a decade.” She put her cup down, empty, when her tone changed. “Speaking of, you can tell your King friend that if he desires his blood back he can have it. If I haven’t found a use for it in the past three hundred years, I doubt I’m ever going to.”

Eliot swallowed the tea in his mouth so hard it physically hurt his throat, and Margo lowered her own cup with pursed lips. She cleared her throat and answered instead to give Eliot a moment to recollect himself. “He won’t be needing it either, so I guess you can keep it-”

“Quentin,” Eliot interrupted. “His name was Quentin, and he’s dead.” Something vicious and terribly sad washed over him, hearing them tap dance around his name. The witch hadn’t even remembered it, had she ever known? Fuck, did they ever ask her for her name? Maybe they just never exchanged them, but Eliot did remember something about the blood and Q asking for it back those years ago -

Wait, blood. She had Q’s blood.

The witch raised an eyebrow at Eliot’s violent outburst and following silence, then tapped her fingers on the arm of her chair as if in thought. “That’s a shame, for the late King.” She had the same spark in her eyes from before, when Eliot looked up at his realization. “But could be good for you. Is this Quentin… reachable?”

Eliot could barely find his voice. “Why?”

“Just curious.”

“No,” Margo snapped loudly, shattering whatever covert conversation they were having without voicing the words. “He’s not _reachable_. He’s gone.” She stared hard at Eliot, giving him a stern look that he out right ignored.

“Dead isn’t always unreachable,” the witch began only to be cut off again.

“Not dead, gone. He is _gone_.” Margo told her with a glare. She wasn’t going to let this bat shit crazy witch get Eliot’s hopes up on something that was not even feasible.

“Shame,” the witch said again, distractedly.

“No! No, tell me,” Eliot pleaded, clinging to the arms of his chair and leaning forward to better gain the witch’s attention.

“El, no,” Margo warned worriedly, but Eliot darted narrowed, desperate eyes to her face and silenced her with a look.

“Let her talk,” he said. Serious as a heart attack.

The witch looked between them carefully, the firelight making their expressions glow and illuminating the internal turmoil this subject had brought up. She’d seemed to realize she’d stumbled on something far greater than a simple resurrection, if that’s what she was implying, and looked to be rethinking even bringing up the option. She’d mentioned she was lacking customers, Margo remembered that distinctly, but she doubted this was in the witch’s wheelhouse. “Well,” the witch began, clearing her throat before taking the leap instead of backtracking, “since the King - Quentin’s - blood is still here in this world, it can be used as a part of a spell to resurrect his body.”

She fucking knew it. “There _is_ no body,” Margo spit, getting angry and over-protective of the man beside her. She could see the hope brewing and growing with her fairy eye, a faint yellow peaking through the bleak black and blue, like the sun through storm clouds. “He is _gone_ , all of him. I don’t know how much clearer I can be.”

The witch hummed and nodded, biting her tongue, but her eyes were trained on Eliot. Eliot, who looked both murderous and defeated, angry at himself more than Margo for shutting down whatever the witch was offering. He’d seen a stray thread, connecting to his dream that still haunted his waking thoughts, and he’d clung to it like a lifeline. He’d been ready to throw himself at it, at any chance to see Q again. Margo reached for his hand, but he didn’t even flinch at her touch.

With a careful sigh, the witch took pity on the two Children of Earth, and took one final leap. “I know a spell,” she told them in the silence, only the fire in her hearth crackling and spitting in the quiet. “Complex and difficult, that can rebuild a body.” Both Eliot and Margo sat at attention, watching wearily. “But the ingredients alone are very specific. Each piece required must be from the same relevant time that they parted with the body - or the spell won’t work. It’ll end up pulling from different stages of the person’s life.”

Eliot’s lips were parted in slight shock, but his brain was firing on all cylinders. Without the pain in his abdomen and limbs to distract him, he couldn’t help but lazer focus on every word out of the witch’s mouth, every twitch to her expression. “What would we need?” he asked, regaining himself and sitting taller than he had in weeks.

“Skin, blood, and bone,” the witch told him gravely. “I have the blood, the others will be tricky. They must be from the same time period, within a year of each other and not a day more.”

“So no baby teeth,” Margo muttered, joining the conversation but finally slipping back to herself. Were they actually talking about this? She still had a hold of Eliot’s hand, but now Eliot was grasping it back - tightly and with a slight tremble to the hold.

“No, and without a body to pick from I don’t know what you will do about skin,” the witch added.

“He didn’t exactly had dandruff,” Margo mentioned.

“Would hair work?” Eliot questioned, looking between the two women. “Hair is just made of dead skin cells, well - the outer layer. So are our fingernails.” Margo almost laughed at him, incredulous.

“How the fuck do you know that?”

“College biology, I had a thing for the TA,” Eliot said, for a split second almost sounding like himself.

“If that’s true,” the witch interrupted with an amused smile, “then it should work. Although I’ve never heard of it. But bone?”

“I have an idea about that,” Eliot said distantly, looking at nothing as he weighed a possibility he didn’t share. “But I’ll need some time.”

“Dear, it’s been 300 years. Take all the time you need,” the witch assured him. “But - this will only build the body. And the body needs a soul in order to live.”

“El, sidebar,” Margo hissed, pulling on his arm and leaning their heads together far too obviously to say so in his ear. She jerked him from the chair and they found themselves just under the porch, within sight of the witch but out of earshot. She needed to get them out of this while they still had their heads barely above water. “Listen -”

“The blood Margo,” Eliot interjected, eyes bright in the dark forest. “The blood, from my dream. Q’s blood. This is what he was talking about, he left it behind. He forgot it was here.”

“El you cannot get your hopes up like this when we know there is none!” Margo insisted.

“But what if there is? It has to mean something, finding her in the woods the _day_ after I have my dream,” Eliot said, both pleading and demanding Margo to understand. To agree. “Fillory is known for a lot of fuckery, but coincidences aren’t one of them.”

“Maybe back when we had a fucked up goat god pulling the strings, but we don’t know this will lead anywhere. And we can’t bring Q back if he’s _nowhere_ El. Please, don’t do this to yourself.”

“I’d rather be prepared with an _option_ to bring him back than to have to scramble with my thumb up my ass at the last minute,” Eliot near snapped. “I know he’s gone, Margo, you think I fucking _forgot_ ! It’s all I can think about, but this is the first shred of a chance of _anything_ that we’ve had since he died. Everyone else can drop it and go on with their lives, but I can’t just toss this away.”

“That’s not fair, Eliot,” Margo whispered.

“Nothing about this is fair. So just let me do this, Bambi. Let me explore it at least, and if I can’t do anything then at least I fucking tried. At least I’m moving forward,” Eliot deflated so fast Margo worried he would sway to the side and just fall against the side of the house. He left his cane inside.

She grabbed his hands in hers and bit her lip to keep herself from continuing to yell. “Please,” Eliot said above her, catching her gaze with his own. “Don’t talk me out of it. Let me try, for Q.” It was the most Eliot had said Quentin’s name or mentioned him in a row without shutting down. Margo shook her head minutely, not at Eliot but at herself. She didn’t like it, she hated it, because she knew how it would all end. No matter how much she would make him promise to be careful, to not get his hopes up so high he couldn’t see when things were lost, she knew Eliot wouldn’t be able to do it. This was going to consume him, and the only other person who would be able to pull him out was gone.

But she couldn’t stop him. She could only be there to pick up the pieces after.

“Okay,” she said, more mouthing the words than speaking them. Her voice failed her, and she wanted to cry just out of frustration at what she couldn’t stop. But breaking in someone’s face would do just as well. Where was a fucking Dark King when you needed him?

They returned inside, and Margo spoke directly to the witch herself. “We’ll do what we can, to find the ingredients. What would you want in return? I assume there’s a price.”

“Gold is always nice,” the witch answered. “Blood doesn’t seem to do me any good with you Children of Earth, popping in and out each century.” Margo smiled her shark like smile, sharp but agreeable.

“We can do that.”

-

The grumpy horse that had many unkind things to say about them, at length, reluctantly agreed to take them to the land of the centaurs so Eliot could heal. The witch loaded him up with pain relief concoctions to chew on the way there, and helped him up onto the horse for the duration of the ride. It was only another two or three miles, but it would be painful without her magical aide. Eliot gave her a small downpayment of gold, worth more those days than back when he had them minted as High King, for her trouble and services to come. She sent them off with a wave and a smile, before disappearing behind the towering candy foliage that surrounded her cottage.

They were barely a half mile down the road when Margo stopped at the sight of a bridge that looked _super_ familiar beneath the vines and crumbled stone that came with age. The horse noticed before Eliot did, grumbling about tourists before turning to look at her and directing Eliot’s attention as well.

“What is it?”

“There,” Margo motioned to the bridge and the dark woods beyond it. “Isn’t the Wellspring just over that hill back there?” Eliot followed her direction, looking out over the hill and a bit further from his high vantage point.

“No, it’s further. Maybe a mile?”

“That’s not far,” Margo pointed out, staring out into the spaces between the trees. She could make it in 20 minutes at most.

The horse shuffled it’s feet and Eliot pondered Margo’s expression. “You think we have time to pop over and check it out? Just to see what we’re up against.”

“Not on that horse,” Margo pointed out.

“I’m not going that way,” the horse said outright, already shifting towards going back down the road. “And you won’t make it there and back, the tea leaves won’t last that long.” Margo kept staring intently into the forest, and Eliot kept watching her. They both knew the horse was right.

“Go,” Eliot told her, snapping Margo’s attention away from the bridge. “Just to scout,” he insisted, holding up a finger at her. “Nothing more. I don’t like it, but we’re too close not to take a look.”

“El, it’s okay.”

He held up a hand this time, placatingly. “I need to do what I need to for Q, and you need to do this - for Fen and Josh. But we’re going to do this together. You aren’t going to fight him alone, if you find him.”

“Of course not,” Margo said, coming up to the horse and taking Eliot’s hand again. They hadn’t been this physical, in need of constant touch and reassurance, since their time at Brakebills. Personal space had never been an issue for them, but it had never been so intimate either. After the incident with Q and the threesome, they had strayed a bit to put some space between them - without compromising their friendship. But after that morning Eliot woke up to find Q gone from this world and crumbled in Margo’s arms, they couldn’t seem to stop holding on or reaching out to each other. It was the only grounding thing they had left.

“We do this together,” Eliot repeated.

“Yes, as soon as you’re well,” Margo said with a soft smile that didn’t always quite fit her face. It wasn’t many people who saw it. “We will kick ass, take names, and get our family back.” Eliot nodded, swallowing back the emotions trying to choke him.

“Be careful.”

“I’ll be right behind you,” Margo insisted. “Don’t let those racist centaur dicks push you around.” She watched the horse take him around the bend in the road, before taking her own path across the crumbling bridge and over the hills to the Wellspring.

-

It was dark when she reached the little shack that housed the Wellspring. The sky a deep cerulean blue and lightning bugs struggling to speckle the grass in the autumn cold. Margo stayed within the treeline, peering through the dark to the lit windows and open door, a vast study that didn’t belong in Fillory inside. She squinted to make out what was within, and was surprised to see movement. Someone was pacing, moving things about, and carrying items to a roaring fire.

This Dark King, whoever he was, was definitely human shaped. White, from what she could tell, and dressed in the most boring tan and brown grandpa clothes that she only caught glimpses of. He was legit living out of the shack, like a tiny vacation home - a cabin in the woods like what writers use during the summer seasons.

Margo’s eyes snapped wide, her mouth parted in shock, and the curl of anger began to shape her features. _No_. No, not a fucking chance.

She left the safety of her hiding spot and stormed across the grass, up the small hill towards the open cottage door, and the closer she got the more she could see inside. It was still the old English office, more lived in and used that she remembered, and the shape of the Dark King was bent over the small fire poking at the embers and moving a tea kettle onto the cast iron hook over it. The King unfolded himself just as she reached the threshold, and turned around with a startled sound that curdled her stomach.

“Oh, a visitor,” the man said, smiling thinly, then recognition flashed behind his glasses. “I know you, a friendly face from Earth. I must say it’s been a long time-”

Margo crossed the 10 feet of space between them and punched Christopher Plover in his fucking face, sending the old man reeling backward and slamming his head against the stone fireplace. His body crumbled to the ground, head bleeding, and Margo didn’t bother to check if he was breathing. The spells carved into his face would just revive him if he wasn’t.

Reaching into the folds of her coat, Margo pulled out a small pouch that she had enchanted to hold her personal items when traveling. From inside she summoned her battle axes, won through blood, sweat and tears in the desert outskirts of Fillory, and had to spend every second resisting the urge to bury them into Plover’s skull.

In what fucking, messed up shit of a world did Christopher Plover get to live and rule Fillory - while Q was dead and gone forever? None, that’s what, not while Margo motherfucking Hanson had any say about it. Margo sat herself in the plush armchair by the fire, watching the old man bleed into the carpet and holding each ax in hand across her lap regally. The only thing anchoring her.

She knew she promised Eliot she wouldn’t do this without him, but she had some unresolved anger and grief to work through. As well as answers to gain that only the immortal pedophile could reveal.

What happened next was something she had to do alone.

-

_The Metro_

-

The silence pressed in from all sides inside the empty train car. Queinten’s breathing had never seemed so loud, so deliberate, that it took actual effort to breathe in and out - just to break up the quiet. He waited for what felt like hours for someone, or something, to come and reveal why the metro train had stopped in the darkness. But no one did.

Slowly he rose from his seat, looking down the isles to the connector doors between the cars, each had a large window in the center and he could see both behind him and in front. Nothing moved, the cars all looked the same, and the anxiety increased tenfold as Quentin feared what it all meant. He still fully believed he’d done something to fuck up his track to the afterlife, or wherever he was ‘meant to go’ after his last colossal fuck up in the land of the living. But if no one was going to seek him out and explain it, maybe he was supposed to go in search of answers on his own.

That always seemed to be the case when it came to his life, or death in this instance.

Taking one last look behind him at the empty car that followed his, Quentin finally side-stepped close enough to the door at the front of the car to have chosen a direction. He felt like his palms should be sweaty, clenching them and unclenching them as if to double and triple check. How could he be this nervous and have nothing to show for it beyond the screaming in his head?

He opened the door, and stepped across the short drop with cables to the next platform and door to another passenger car, this one just as empty as the last. After the third car it became easier to move without trepidation weighing him down, although he looked through each empty car thoroughly as he passed them. There wasn’t a speck of lint or a single stray hair left on a seat to give him a clue as to where they were headed or what he was supposed to do. After the fifth car Q just began to get a little angry. Seriously, what the hell was this?

Blindly he opened another door and stepped across the gap only to come to a door with no window, and a golden handle that still opened freely for him in his momentum. He stopped short with the handle already turned, noticing the difference, then slowly opened the door and stepped inside.

It was a dining car, like you’d find on an actual train that crossed the country on iron tracks, with booth tables and a full bar in the center behind a half circle counter. The lamps that hung from the ceilings looked oil lit, giving off a soft yellow glow against the blood red walls and deep mahogany finishings. It wasn’t until he’d looked around the car a few times that he noticed the man sitting at a booth in the far corner.

He didn’t say anything, just stared at Quentin was a quiet amused expression as Quentin stared back. Something about his presence, regal and other-wordly, gave him away as a god in an instant. A god of the underworld? Mentally Q went through all he could possibly remember of death gods in all the older religions, while doing his best to not let the panic show on his face. Nervously, with jerking motions, Q raised his hand in greeting and managed, “...Hi.” before his voice gave out on him. The click of how hard he swallowed seemed to echo in the car afterward.

“Hello,” the man told him, nodding and waiting patiently as Quentin finally came up to his booth and slid into the seat across from him. “We finally meet, Quentin Coldwater.” If Q still had a heartbeat it would have pounded up his throat and choked him he was so scared. “40 deaths, that’s quite a bit for someone… such as yourself.”

“Unremarkable,” Quentin answered for him, remembering what Eliza - Jane Chatwin - had told him those years ago at the beginning of his journey at Brakebills. “Yeah, I didn’t get much choice in that. Sorry,” he added quickly in afterthought, brushing his hair (that had grown longer than it had been when he died) behind his ears in is usual self-calming ritual. He still didn’t know who he was talking to.

The man smiled thinly, something cool in his expression behind what was probably meant to be a welcome. Or at least Quentin hoped it was. “Can you guess who I am?” Did he know what Quentin was thinking? The smile widened a tiny bit, answering Q’s question.

“I have a few ideas,” he admitted, without committing to an answer.

“Here’s a clue; you’ve been in my house. Borrowed one of my wife’s… sentiments.” He had a fondness in the mention of his wife.

“Borrowed?” Quentin asked dumbly.

“They all return to us in the end. We are in charge, after all,” he spread his hands as he said it, patient but enjoying toying with Quentin’s torment of remaining calm under what was obviously a power far surpassing any he’d encountered before. Even the monster twins. The dots connected, the stars aligned, and Quentin’s mouth dropped open a little in shock.

“You’re Hades.”

A pale white light glowed from the man’s eyes, matching the glaring white teeth, and Hades nodded at him silent but proud. Q swallowed hard again, and again wondered why he wasn’t shaking, why his body wasn’t reacting to all the raging emotions inside him.

“You know the answer to that,” Hades chided, slowly waving a finger in reprimand. “You need a body, and if you had one here you wouldn’t be able to withstand my presence.”

“Am I in the afterlife?” Quentin managed to ask, his voice cracking a bit in strain from what must have been old habits.

“Not quite,” Hades said, motioning to the darkness beyond the windows. “We are still in the ether, between the different places souls go and remain. We had to change your destination, which doesn’t happen often.” The amused look was back, a single dark eyebrow raised as the old god enjoyed whatever situation a mere mortal soul had stumbled upon.

“Was it something I did?” Q mumbled, almost too scared to ask.

“Oh yes,” Hades grinned gently. “Not everyone leaves the platform and regains their sense of mortal purpose, even the young ones such as you - the ones that could have had so much more life to live. But you’ve never had a normal way of thinking, have you Quentin.”

“My brain breaks sometimes,” Quentin felt himself answering without thinking, a line he’d spoken long ago in a memory he’d already lived and relived.

Hades nodded in agreement. “So it does. You’re not alone in that, but you are the first mortal to stop the train because of it.”

Q gaped a bit. “ _I_ stopped the train.”

“Well I certainly didn’t,” Hades said almost gleefully beneath the cool exterior. “It seems that you have a proposition in front of you, Quentin. One that is not handed out often, once in a century. They used to write songs and ballads about them.”

“What?” Quentin’s brain felt like it was spinning, trying to grasp the momentous event happening in front of him. “A-A what?”

“An adventure,” Hades grinned. “Isn’t that what you’ve always wanted, a quest to be written into legend? Told thousands of years later, by scholars and poets alike.”

“N-No, I don’t,” Quentin pushed his hair back again and swore he could feel a tremble in his fingers. “I thought… I thought I did, but I never really knew what I wanted. When I had everything, it just wasn’t…”

Hades stared as Quentin struggled for words, but the mortal soul finally went quiet and Hades lowered his eyes to recenter his approach. “Quentin, the train would not have stopped if this wasn’t where you were meant to go.” Q looked up, pleading for this all to finally make sense. “But - you have to want it as well. Which is not something that comes naturally to you. You said it yourself, you’ve never really known what you wanted. No matter the outcome, you were never really going to be happy. Were you.”

Q had never before felt the amount shame he did in that moment, when the god of the underworld underhandedly accused him - clinically depressed and life-long suicidal card holder - of not even being happy with death. The question if his death had been his final attempt, despite the veil of heroics involved, came back to him with full force and sank talons into his heart.

Hades pointed a long finger at him from across the table. “That, there, is why I’m here. We could have just opened the doors and let you out into this quest you must embark - but I have my doubts. That even with the route this will take, how it will help your world and your friends you care so-”

“What?” Q interrupted, shocked into action instantaneously. “They’re in trouble?” He fucking _knew_ it, fuck Penny! That absolute asshole. “What do I need to do?”

“No, see, I can’t accept that,” Hades told him with a disappointed shake of his head.

“But you said they need my help!”

“Quentin, this is exactly how you ended up here in the first place. How you would have always ended up here before, if Alice Quinn hadn’t stolen your book. We have to break the cycle.” Hades leaned on the table, hands clasped in front of him, and Quentin saw his dark fingers wrapped in many different rings. Symbols and etchings that looked familiar in places and hypnotic in others. “You weren’t brought back from the nothingness just to have you throw your very soul in the line of fire. Again.” Hades locked pale eyes on Quentin’s dark ones and made sure his words bore into Quentin’s very essence. “You were meant for something more.”

Q rested his palms on his thighs, longing for the heat they would have given off and painfully reaching for anything grounding under the scrutiny of the god before him. “You aren’t going to tell me what, are you?”

Hades shook his head, that small smile quirking his mouth once more. Not even bothering with a response or reprimand.

Quentin took a deep, unneeded breath, and answered as honestly as he could. “I can’t make any promises for what’s going to happen, but I will try to take better care of my soul than I did my life.” He shrugged half-heartedly. “It’s all I’ve got left.” He still wasn’t sure why it sounded like, according to Hades, he wasn’t even supposed to have that. But it probably had something to do with his friends having a memorial for him where they burned all his stuff instead of brushing up on their Herculean legends to attempt a rescue. Q hadn’t even considered it until he sat there across from Hades, god of the underworld, but it made him more suspicious of the whole situation. He put a pin in that thought and looked back at the god, who had a secretive glee gleaming in his eyes.

“Not quite all, but I will take it.” He leaned back and clapped his hands, the deafening sound echoing throughout the car. A pair of doors folded open out of nowhere, revealing the vast empty dark beyond and nothing more. Q had whipped around to see them open, but when nothing else materialized he turned to Hades once more like a scared animal about to venture into a trap.

“Where are we? What’s out there?” He couldn’t believe he stringed together those words coherently.

“Death.” Hades said simply, this time his face betraying nothing. The test had begun. “Good luck, Quentin Coldwater. Until we meet again.” If that wasn’t enough of a dismissal, Hades vanished in a breath, not leaving a flutter in the air or a trace he’d been there at all.

Q could do nothing but stand and exit the now abandoned booth, the least shaky he’d ever been on his feet, but also more nervous than he'd ever been - even facing The Beast, or under the hands of the monster that inhabited Eliot. Death had been a companion of his for years, a flirtatious tease on the horizon, forever out of reach, but now it awaited him just beyond the doors of the train. Now that he had it in his grasp, truly and tangible as it was ever going to be, Quentin couldn’t help but be scared out of his mind.

As well as curious beyond words. He stood at the threshold of the open doors, the inky blackness calling him and also pushing him back. But then he remembered what Hades had told him, that this adventure - this quest - was going to help his friends. The ones he loved more than family. With the most complicated mix of trepidation and determination, a duty to the people he had died for - as well as his promise to the god of the underworld that he would protect the final string tying him to any existence at all, he stepped into the dark. Expecting a semblance of ground that would lead him away into the darkness.

Instead, he fell tumbling into the void and disappeared from sight.

\--

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Russian translations:  
>  _Kto ty_ \- Who are you?  
>  _Ya staryy drug, poydem s nami, my ochistim tebya_ \- I am an old friend, come with us. We will clean you up.  
>  _Prochitya eto mne_ \- Read it to me  
>  _Slaboumnyy_ \- Imbecile.  
>  _Ya mog by yest’._ \- I could eat.  
>  _Vechnaya pamyat._ \- (Traditional funeral toast, usually only done at wakes) To his everlasting memory.
> 
> P.S. I'm not sure I actually believe in these 'Plover stans' that I keep hearing rumors about, but if you happen to be one I'm sorry to say you won't like my next chapter. When I said that everyone gets a story arc/redemption story, I meant everyone except for the rapist pedophile who is solely responsible for creating The Beast.


	3. Episode 503

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize for the delay. I've been dealing with some pregnancy complications lately, and had a couple family trips last month, and I thought I'd be able to continue to write during them. Spoiler: I was _wrong_. But good news is I busted out the majority of this chapter in like a week, so I hope to keep up the momentum for the rest. I have a lot of ground to cover before the new season (and this baby is born).
> 
> Chapter TW/notes:  
> -Continued mention and discussion of suicide, just expect that for most of the story. I'll keep adding it as warnings, just in case.  
> -Grief as well, more dumb decisions, exc.  
> -Some math stuff? I hope I explained it and wrote it in a way where it's not super boring, it was important for laying groundwork, but you don't actually have to understand it all.  
> -I didn't change scenes around as much. In my head they would overlap and change a lot, like in the episodes, but there's some rapid-fire scene changes at the end and I didn't want it to get too overwhelming; so everyone's stories are going to kind of be in blocks this chapter.  
> -It's long, again, as long as the last one. Thank you to all who reassured me that long is not bad. I can't express how happy and relieved that makes me. The storylines are going to start merging and condensing from here on out so that might help with the word count. We will see.  
> \- I am my own beta, and it was a tiny bit rushed in the end. But I really wanted to get this posted and get on to the next chapter, because it's gonna be so good. Any problems, typos, or inconsistencies are all my fault. 
> 
> Thank you so much for reading, please enjoy <3

\--

Episode 503:

The Things We Do For Love (and Other Disastrous Stories That Begin With a Tower)

\--

_Fillory_

-

The inside of the Wellspring shack was dark and remained so until dawn began to pearl the horizon beyond the trees. It took far too long for Plover to wake. Margo was certain after the first hour that the man had actually died, and only idly wondered how long it would take the spells carved into his face to revive him - as she cleaned her nails with an absurdly sharp letter opener. The replica office inside the shack held nothing of importance, and she had already out right trashed it in her search. Hoping for some scrap of a journal or ledger or _something_ to give her hints of what he did during the beginning of his time back in Fillory. He was too self-obsessed not to have anything. Margo needed some kind of direction just in case she had just lost her only lead.

Ugh, _back_ in Fillory. She would out right gag if her lips hadn’t been pursed shut so long in rage and frustration that they were probably glued together by her lipstick. She heaved a deep breath through her nose and let it out in a long sigh, her temper held temporarily in check as she let it roil and roll within her. Just waiting to be lashed out in sharp, precise strikes. That this man even dared to be so ambitious, so disgustingly bold, as to lay claim to a land he had no right to even be touching. What Martin Chatwin had done to him as The Beast was the very least of what Christopher Plover deserved, and Margo swore that when she was done with him she would find a way for him to not even be able to breathe the name Fillory. 

A groan caught her attention lazily, from the spot by the fireplace where Plover’s body had lain prone all night. She glanced over her shoulder out the solitary window to see the sun finally rising just beyond the treeline. Apparently his spell reset at the beginning of each day. Margo took note silently as she watched Plover try to pry himself from the pool of dried blood that stuck his face to the carpet. With nose upturned, eyes half lidded, and not a single fuck given. Margo hadn’t slept a wink all night, and she was more awake than she’d ever been. 

Plover managed to rise to his knees, straightening his glasses back across the bridge of his nose, half his face coated in crusted rust-red blood and a bewildered expression on his face. 

“You killed me,” he gaped, breathless and astonished. Margo merely watched him try to gather his wits about him, unfazed and not amused in the least.

“I need information from you,” was her response, working on her last finger on her left hand with the letter opener - cleaning out underneath the long, pink-painted nail carefully. Her axes still laid on her lap, crossed and gleaming in the early morning light. She had every intention of using them before she left Plover in whatever ditch she deemed fit. 

“And, why in the-the world - would I help you,” Plover stuttered out, struggling to his feet by pulling himself up on the very corner of the fireplace he’d bashed his skull into 8 hours before. 

Margo tilted her head and leveled a hard stare at the ‘Dark King’, pausing her ministrations. “What makes you think I’m asking.” The man could try to be brave and put up whatever bullshit front he wanted, Margo had already killed him once. She’d do it again if she had to. There was always tomorrow.

The frown on his face legit quivered, like a child with a trembling chin, and his knees shook weakly from the blood loss as Plover lowered himself into a small chair on the opposite wall of the shack. A smug turn of lips graced Margo’s face, mean and nothing close to a smile, but she lowered the letter opener to address the immortal pedophile. 

“Fen and Josh,” she stated, “Where are they?”

“Who?”

 _Motherfucker_. “High King Fen, and Josh the Fresh Prince,” Margo ground out dangerously, beyond irritated by Plover’s face after five minutes with him. “The ones you stole my fucking kingdom from, and locked away somewhere to rot for 300 years.” Her blazing glare had to be burning holes through his damn sweater, and Plover was shrunk so far back in his seat from the sheer amount of anger on her face. “Where. Are. They.”

Plover failed to grasp words, mouth open as he fumbled verbally. “I-I don’t, I’m not sur-”

“Stop,” Margo snapped. “Think _very_ carefully before you answer.” That was going to be her only warning, she decided. Her god-killing axes had a high chance of actually harming the man beyond the next day. 

Plover actually listened, and breathed so fast and deep he was close to hyper-ventilating. Margo rolled her eyes and rested back against the plush armchair, propping herself up on one hand and waiting until the man in front of her decided to stop having a crisis. She wasn’t going to apologize or aide him just because she’d scared him shitless. Yes, she was intimidating as fuck. But that’s not how a shake down works. Her sympathy in that moment equaled nill. 

When his breathing slowed enough to be close to normal, Margo raised an eyebrow and asked in such a dead-pan tone she might as well have been asleep, “You done?” 

Plover nodded, still shaky, but seemed to have gathered some semblance of wits about him enough to answer her. To look her in the eye, even as intimidated as he was beneath her hard, unblinking stare. Sitting there, bathed in the faint firelight and backlit by the coming grey dawn, Margo knew she looked like The Destroyer - upholding her name with such unflinching ferocity it was intoxicating. She let the sensation stay draped about her shoulders like a robe, instead of going to her head, and waited deadly silent for Plover to explain himself. 

“They didn’t know who I was,” he began, picking and choosing his words carefully. So British, but with the quiver of a coward. The sly underhanded notion that placed blame on anyone but himself. Margo could see right through it, narrowing her eyes at him, but let him continue, “so I couldn’t tell if they were Fillorians or from Earth. We locked them away, until I could have a better handle on the kingdom.” He was driving the tangent away, and Margo ceased his words with a flick of her wrist. Pointing the sharp letter opener she still held towards the man in the wicker chair.

“Where,” her words were questions, but not spoken as such. It was an ability she’d only learned in Fillory, and she had become quite skilled in using it.

 “In the Tower of Lost Time, so I could take as long as I needed,” Plover said, as if the answer would somehow grant him favor. 

“Where the fuck is the Tower of Lost Time?”

“In the Clock Barrens.” Margo just continued to glare at him. “It’s to the East of here, how have you never been to the Clock Barrens? The forest of clock trees?”

“I’ve been to the Clock Barrens,” Margo snapped. “It isn’t a forest, it’s a small circle of sad Charlie Brown Christmas trees.” She recalled Jane Chatwin, carefully taking care of her twig like clock trees in a fifteen foot diameter circle that was somehow existing out of time. “I took her key, Jane Chatwin said the timey-wimey-shit wouldn’t work once I took the key from her.”

“That’s worrying,” Plover murmured, trying to busy himself with pulling the flakes of crusted blood off his skin. “The trees still grew, over the centuries - it’s definitely a forest now. Time still flows strangely there-”

“What does it mean about Fen and Josh?”

“Well… they’re clock trees, aren’t they? Time isn’t set at a standard pace around them, or at least that’s what I was led to believe,” Plover attempted in his own defense, and Margo’s scowl deepened at him. “No one really knows their purpose, so your friends could be alive still.”

“You mean you don’t know!?” Margo near shouted, her voice filling the small space, demanding and loud.

“No! It’s been 300 years!” Plover shouted back, more out of fear than anger. “I never - never got around to checking on them.” The fear consumed his voice until it was so tiny he swallowed it, watched as Margo rose to her feet and took both axes in hand. Looming and threatening in her hands, clasped so tight her knuckles whitened. 

“You’re taking me there. Now.”

“It’s a three day walk,” Plover somehow strung together.

“Now.”

-

The three day trek went a lot faster than expected, especially with Plover dragging his feet and bitching and moaning the whole way. Even as slow going as it was through the Northern Marshes, one of the greatest eyesores of the Fillorian countryside. The very air reeked of sweet rot and brackish water, tall reeds and grasses blocking view when the muggy mist didn’t, and the raised wooden platforms that wound through the waters and mud seemed to go on forever. They almost lost their way twice, but Plover didn’t want to be in the marshes any longer than needed, and Margo wanted to make up for lost time. The marshes themselves were haunted by creatures and spirits that liked to prey on travelers, as Plover pointed out ad nauseum. Margo just let him worry himself into a mess, as long as he kept walking. She wasn’t scared of what lay in the marshes. 

Or at least, she wasn’t until she looked out over a large open expanse and saw a giant turtle the size of an apartment building breach the surface of the mud out in the giant lake-like bog they crossed. She walked a little faster after that. 

When they finally reach the Clock Barrens the first frost of the year has begun to dust the ground in the early mornings, the ice-dusted grass crunching under their feet as they left the main roads and started towards the towering trees Plover indicated as their destination. He hadn’t been shitting Margo when he said the trees had grown. They towered over the two residents of Earth, evergreen pine needles also coated in frost and filling the air with the sweet scent of juniper. Margo also swore the branches hummed as they passed beneath them, radiating all kinds of magic that her fairy eye could barely decipher. The radiating waves looked iridescent when they caught the sunlight, and it was both entrancing and disturbing. She couldn’t put her finger on why.

The faces of the clocks in the trees were dusty and weather-worn, some had spinning hands, others ticked back and forth but never completed a full circle. The ticking sounds were out of sync, creating a chaotic air that set her teeth on edge. The whole forest felt _wrong_. 

“We’re here,” Plover announced as he came to the edge of the Barrens, and gestured towards a short stumpy tower that only rose about two or three stories off the ground. It was made of old grey-yellow bricks that were crumbling as they stood there staring at it, not even the vines that trailed up the sides seemed like enough to hold the infrastructure together.

“Jesus tap-dancing Christ,” Margo scowled. “Were the cells in Blackspire full?”

“It didn’t look quite this bad when I left them here-” Plover began, taking off his glasses to clean them in nervousness.

“300 fucking years ago,” Margo filled in snappishly. “It looks like it’s been a thousand.”

“Time does move differently here.”

“Yeah, yeah, shut up and come on,” Margo stalked towards the tower like a stiff wind wouldn’t make it fall on their heads. Plover hesitated, but followed, seeming to have weighed the worst outcome from him of entering the decrepit building or facing Margo’s wrath. 

It was an easy choice, really.

Walking into the building, the decay and heavy presence of time that splintered at the walls mercilessly struck a chord somewhere in Margo’s chest intensely. She couldn’t say exactly what made it hit her all at once, but it did and it was excruciating - like the aftereffects of that Japanese spell they used years ago. Fuck, it really was years ago. Instead of navigating the inside of the tower strategically, she found herself wandering towards the center. Noticing every speck of moss, every disfigured brick, and all the spaces where there had once been something important that time had whittled away to nothing. Ground into dust among the grass that now blanketed the ground inside the tower; brick and mortar dust. _Just like Q_. Just like Tic and Rafe, and maybe even like Josh and Fen. The air inside the clock barrens and inside the tower felt thick with layered years piling on top of each other, sticking in Margo’s throat and dragging down her lungs. 

What the hell was this place?

“You’re strong, for a human,” said a raspy voice from the shadows, as old and frail as the tower that housed it. Margo turned towards the creature, moving slowly as if underwater, and peered into the darkness. “You are out of your time, as am I - but in different ways.” Hunched over against the wall, lightly curled in on itself, was an old wolf. Fur so thin and brittle it appeared ill, and it’s haunting brown eyes that Margo had only witnessed herself once before she was even High King were now milky white and unseeing. But they were still as deep and comforting as they had been the day she’d knelt in front of the great wolf to take its paw in greeting. One of the few Unique Beasts that seeks out instead of being chased.

“The Kind Wolf,” she murmured, and again knelt in the grass on both knees so she could better see the old wolf herself. So he could feel her close to him and know her, if he remembered. “I didn’t know the Unique Beasts got old.”

“Without Ember and Umber, our powers wax and wane. Not all of us have made it all these centuries,” the Kind Wolf told her, though something like recognition seemed to cross it’s canine face. “It’s good to hear your voice, High King Margo.” It tried to bow it’s great shaggy head, but Margo stopped the motion with her hand and scratched behind his ears without even meaning to. He looked so old, as old as the tower - as if he and it would tremble into pieces and lay peacefully on the ground in one final sigh any moment. 

“What are you doing here?” she asked, as kindly as she’d ever spoken in the past three days. A side effect of the Unique Beast’s powers. The wolf had the ability to drudge up kindness and compassion from even the blackest hearts. Margo had a tough shield against the world, but inside she knew she was soft and loved with every inch of her being. The Kind Wolf, even back during the reign of the four Kings when Eliot had been High King, had cracked her open, warmed every inch of her chest and eased the smile onto her face with one simple look. 

“Waiting for you,” the Kind Wolf said, leaning into the scratch and panting with a long spotted tongue in between phrases. “I was companion to The Seeing Hare, who knew you’d come, but not how long it would be. He passed two decades ago.” The Seeing Hare had been a four foot rabbit that could run about forty miles an hour and avoided contact with anything that breathed. Eliot spent a whole summer with Quentin trying to find it once. If caught, it predicted the future of it’s captor. Much like the Questing Beast who would grant three wishes. “I stayed to give you his message.”

“You really are too kind for your own good,” Margo told him sadly, fingers running through the wiry fur. “I would have given up after a few days.”

“No, you wouldn’t have,” the Kind Wolf said. “Otherwise you would not be here, looking for your friends.”

“Have you seen them?” Margo asked, breathless but careful not to rush the old wolf. She worried he would fall apart beneath her fingertips.

“They are no longer here,” the Kind Wolf said sadly, but with a look that kept Margo’s eyes trained on the milky depths of it’s own. “But they are not lost. That is part of the message.”

“I guess I better hear it then, so you can rest,” she told the old dog, who nodded gratefully.

“It is this: _Do not fear the new path. When you return, the ones you seek will still be waiting for you. Look to the clocktrees, they are the door._ ”

“He wasn’t more specific?” Margo exasperated quietly.

“Sadly, no. I think I’ve worked out a few of the riddles, but the rest will be up to you I’m afraid.” Margo sighed in relief, thankful she wasn’t completely alone in trying to figure out that stupid rabbit’s cryptic-ass messages. Speaking of - she looked up and over her shoulder, trying to see if Plover had made a run for it. She’d been so distracted by the Kind Wolf appearing that she’d forgotten all about him. But around a corner not far from where she knelt she could see the old man shuffling in his grandpa sweater, the most lost and tragic look on his face like he was going to cry and scream all at once whenever he could work up the nerve.

“What’s wrong with him?” she muttered, but the old wolf had sharp ears with his other senses failing him. 

“He isn’t as strong as you. The Tower of Lost Time has many abilities, but it is saturated in the expanse of time. It is a daunting and terrible thing to experience, for a mortal. Once you breathe it in, it is hard to shake and think of anything other than how small and insignificant a mortal life is in the span of everything.”

“I felt it when I came in,” Margo admitted, not afraid to share her weakness with the old beast.

“And you were able to see through it to the other side. I believe you can do this, the task the Seeing Hare laid out before you.” The Wolf was leaning so heavily on her hands where she’d been scratching his ears and chin that he’d begun to sink lower until his giant head was almost in her lap. “The Hare’s message, the key is the clocktrees.”

“They’re broken.”

“I know. You must fix them to find the door. Then you can save your friends. Time will be merely a hand on the face of a clock, easily winded forward or back. Clocktrees are mysterious, but powerful.”

“And fickle, apparently,” Margo murmured. “I don’t know anything about horomancy.”

“You might not need to, there are still some creatures in this world that you can speak to. When you return.” The Wolf laid heavily in her lap and panted into the grass, his slow heartbeat steady but worrying.

“I’ve already returned,” Margo said, petting his giant head softly. Again, she couldn’t believe how kind her voice sounded, she couldn’t believe it was hers. The Unique Beast was a potent miracle worker, and her heart constricted as the moment stretched towards it’s ending. She had a feeling that the old wolf had gone long beyond his years just to speak with her. Now that his message was delivered, he could finally rest once his business was done. “That part of the prediction has already happened.”

“I don’t believe so,” the Kind Wolf rasped. “You have one more thing to do before you can come back. I think that is what it meant by _don’t fear the path_. You will be led astray from your quest, but Fillory is funny that way. It’ll still be here when you return, just as beautifully broken.” 

“You’re sure it doesn’t mean whatever beast I have to meet and greet isn’t scary and dangerous?”

“Oh, he is. The Prince of Mud is formidable, but not for Margo the Destroyer,” the Kind Wolf grinned a tired wolfy grin. “No, the only thing you fear is your own failure. You won’t fail this time, you just have to be patient.”

“Not one of my strong suits.”

“If it was going to be easy, it would not be a quest.” The wolf sighed a heavy sigh, and took way too long to take another breath. Margo stroked it’s great head and neck, soothing as she could be, already beginning to feel the armor she held so carefully in place begin to shift back. The Kind Wolf’s powers were fading. “If anyone can do these impossible tasks, it is you. I have always believed in you, my High King.”

Margo could feel tears stinging behind her eyes, threatening to blur them, and though she knew the old wolf would not be able to see her cry she still refused to. “Thank you, for everything. Rest now, I promise I won’t give up on them. Or anyone.” She thought of Eliot, and his quest to bring back Q who was lost to all of them, of their friends out doing god knows what in the magic saturated world on Earth, and of Josh and Fen that had waited for someone to rescue them until time swallowed them up. No, she wasn’t giving up on anyone. She knew how to be the rock and the whip, someone to lean on and someone to give a good ass kicking when it called for it. Her to-do list had a few more things that needed ticking off, monumental things, but they were still just bullet points. She could do this.

As she pondered all this, the Kind Wolf took one final breath - long and satisfied in the way one is after a long and tiring day - and exhaled with the kindest, simplest smile on it’s canine face. Then he breathed no more, and his heart slowed to a stop beneath Margo’s hands. Still stroking the fur gently. She didn’t know how to comfort anyone, she was terrible at it, but the Kind Wolf’s powers had pulled that instinctual compassion out from somewhere inside her - to keep stroking his head and neck as he faded. When her hands stilled, tears finally broke from her eyes and a single drop trailed over her cheek. 

Not a moment later, as she laid the giant shaggy head on the grass carefully and stood up, her hardened shell moved back into place. With a determined set to her mouth, she began to try and formulate a plan of action in her head. Only managing to center herself enough to mentally bring up her to-do list when a deafening sound rocked the tower. A crack split up the wall to her left, brick crumbling from the force, and the most direct exit out of the tower became a pile of wooden beams and broken stone. 

The Tower of Lost Time had finally succumbed to the weight of it’s layers of history. Whether from the death of a Unique Beast inside it’s walls, or sheer fucking coincidence, Margo didn’t know. But her eyes were wide and she uttered, “Jesus _fuck_ -” when the whole of the tower began to collapse on her head. Plover screamed somewhere in the small labyrinth of halls inside the tower, and adrenaline finally kicked Margo’s ass into high gear.

She ran.

-

_Brakebills South_

-

Penny woke up and was pretty sure he was dead. His tongue was plastered to the roof of his mouth, and tasted like he’d licked the moss off a rock. Then he’d been bashed over the head with it multiple times afterward. It took an exuberant amount of time for him to even lift his head from the bed successfully, and even more to manage to move into an upright position. Fuck Mayakovsky and his motherfucking lichen vodka. 

Stumbling into the kitchen area, not even daring to try to travel there with how his head was still spinning, Penny was met with a slow applause that echoed through his head painfully.

“Sleeping beauty wakes,” Mayakovsky called from his spot sitting on the long wooden table, another bottle of vodka next to his coffee and papers scattered about him. Dean Fogg was sitting across from him, on the bench like a normal human being, but he also looked smug and not hungover in the slightest. 

Penny retched at the faintest whiff of vodka from the open bottle on the table, and gave them a wide berth as he searched out coffee for himself. “Fuck you, and fuck your damn toilet gin.” 

Mayakovsky just poured another heavy shot into his coffee mug in response. “It takes the edge off, hair of dog,” he offered the bottle in Penny’s direction but the traveler just shook his head and stayed on the far side of the room breathing the steam off his own coffee deeply. Praying for his insides to stop roiling and revolting. “Suit yourself.”

They let him drink two cups, reaffirm that he was indeed alive and not dead from alcohol poisoning, before Penny was (predictably) dragged into the middle of whatever they had been doing while he slept in.

“You ready to help with the task I asked about?” Fogg asked him, turning around on the bench to face his former student.

“You ready to tell me what it is?” Penny droned, still feeling half dead but the strong brew was slowly reviving his nerve endings one by one. 

“One of my old experiments,” Mayakovsky interrupted, holding up a mismatched stack of papers that had obviously been leafed through a hundred times already. “I assume, since it is what dear Henry refused to aide me with before my life sentence.”

“I had no answers for you, Mischa,” Fogg told him, from what also sounded like for the hundredth time,” and we had the same resources back then.”

“Bullshit,” Mayakovsky scoffed, his thick accent making it sound like _bowl-sheet_ with emphasis on the _shit_ half. “You saw something that you knew would decipher it, and you said nothing. You would not have brought _him_ if you did not think he had answers.” Mayakovsky motioned to Penny with his cup, and Penny got fed up of being talked over and finally joined them at the long kitchen table. It could hold as many as 20 students easily, but Mayakovsky’s diagrams and writings (mostly in Russian) covered the entire surface. 

“Give me,” he grunted, taking the papers from his former Professor’s hands without waiting and looking over the diagrams. It was spell formation maps, more complex than he’d ever seen before, and also pages upon pages of math equations. “What is it?”

“Algorithms for creation spells,” Mayakovsky told him, drinking deep and sucking his teeth at the strength of the concoction. “Making things from nothing, as all Magicians do, but these are large scale. Terraforming, growing forests, pulling mountains from ground. They became so enormous I started to convert them to equations - and found patterns. Here.” He took the papers back and spread them out on top of all the others discarded on the tabletop. Some of the equations took up entire pages, and Penny blinked hard as he tried to make sense of it. It’d been a long ass time since he’d had a math class, and he wasn’t entirely sure he wasn’t still a little drunk. 

“Why creation spells?” he asked to stall, trying to read through everything carefully and picking out bits that looked really uncomfortably familiar.

“My thesis, years ago, was on prospect of life and death in spells. When Magicians create, it is hard to make something that will not stay in that state. It does not decay, which is handy except when you want to make something _real._ We can make a tree grow from seed, or make tree from nothing - but tree from nothing will not grow. It will stay. I want to do the opposite. Big picture shit, but my focus on these big spells require complex emotional stimuli to work - which I believe is key,” Mayakovsky said with wide hand gestures. “I wanted to create a whole world, a land from the ground up, but to do so requires many, many weeks of work - until it all fell apart. Too many missing components in the end.”

“Like I said,” Fogg added from his spot across from them. “I could not have helped you. What you were suggesting was beyond what we have even in our libraries at Brakebills.”

“But you still knew _something_ ,” Mayakovsky accused, slamming him mug to the table and pointing in Fogg’s direction. “You never told me _what,_ then everything happened and I was sent here.”

“You did all this while you slept with students?” Penny questioned, not sure if he was impressed or disgusted. A bit of both, probably. Talk about a God complex.

“Not the point,” Mayakovsky waved at him, making Penny scoff and shake his head, “but the years _wasted_ because of your pride _is_.”

“My _pride_?” Fogg challenged, standing up so he was eye to eye with the Russian Magician, and as much as Penny wanted so badly to watch them duke it out - his eye finally caught on a sequence and snagged there entrancingly.

“Wait,” he muttered, flipping the paper over and trying to piece it all together. “Wait, this looks like-” he trailed off and started skimming through everything on the table until he came across a long strip of paper that covered the length of the table. It was comprised of cells, and sequences of numbers that only consisted of 1 and 0. “You have a Turing machine? Did you run this equation?”

Mayakovsky stared at him like he’d grown another head. “No, it would be too long. We’d have to kill a forest to fit it on paper.”

“Yeah no shit,” Penny sneered, looking back at the equation. “There’s a million easier ways to run this than using Linear Base Binary, it’s the most impractical system out there.” He looked up from the strip of paper to twin stares from the professors. “One of my majors was Computer Science, I had a student teacher who was obsessed with computer science theory. Had a real bug up his ass about LBB.” 

Fogg cleared his throat, admitting in his usual steady voice, “I’m afraid I don’t know what Linear Base Binary is.” He sounded the exact opposite of ashamed. The man was made of stone, Penny swore.

“It’s stupid is what it is,” Penny told him. “It’s legit just a string of numbers that represents other numbers. Like 1, 2, 3, 4, in Arabic numerals would look like 1, 11, 111, 1111, and so on,” Penny wrote out as he explained on one of the few unfilled pages, showing Fogg as he did. “Some think it’s the more natural state of numbers, or whatever, and addition and subtraction are easy as shit this way. But complex stuff like what this crazy asshole is doing,” he motioned to Mayakovsky, “makes it the most impractical thing ever. The only thing that could have a snowball’s chance in hell of translating it would be a computer and a Turing machine with a roll of paper the size of this room.”

“I did not choose this system,” Mayakovsky finally told him, not at all interested in defending himself - but impressed in his nonplussed way at Penny’s knowledge. Penny just rolled his eyes at that, he wasn’t stupid. Math and computers were his thing, years ago, some of the only shit that made sense. The cocaine was probably what made them easier to study, too, back when he was trying to drown out the voices. “Every time I try to use other system, even positional system like roman numerals - it all falls apart. Pfft,” he made a scattered motion like a house of cards crumbling under gravity and probability. “Nothing. Only this system. Ones and Zeros.”

“It’s really just ones. The zeros are only there for the computer to make it easier,” Penny explained distractedly as he looked at the complex calculus spread out in strange lines. “Why did you make these in the shape of the spell formation maps?”

“To be honest, I was out of ideas,” Mayakovsky shrugged, not at all ashamed or embarrassed. He and Fogg were more alike than they let on. Penny wasn’t sure if there was anything that could rattle either of the master Magicians at all. “Too many dead ends, thanks to him.” He glared at Fogg again, who merely blinked at the other man.

“I’m here now, and I brought Penny. Mending bridges, Mischa,” Fogg reminded him.

“We shall see.”

“So what _exactly_ are you wanting from me, here?” Penny butted in, still skimming the Turing machine paper so the long strip piled into a ribbon on one side as he skimmed over all the ones and zeros. Fucking LBB was impossible to decipher, that’s why it was ran by computers. Which he wasn’t. There was jack shit Penny could do except tell Mayakovsky to run the damn equation and then go take a holiday for a month somewhere while the machine typed it all out. 

“What I _want_ is translation,” Mayakovksy emphasized. “I want that equation,” he pointed a finger and tapped it hard against the table somewhere in the vicinity of the infinity equation, “to become spell, so we can test it. But it wants to be equation, and not even a simplified equation. These spells pull back the veil on life and death, on creation and destruction, on everything we think is real. Finding out how they work could change magic forever.”

“And make you a private pocket world where you could disappear and never have to deal with any of the bureaucracy ever again,” Penny said, dead-pan as ever.

“Exactly.”

“It goes beyond that,” Fogg chimed in from his seat at the table, fingers steepled together as he processed everything Mayakovsky and Penny had been throwing back and forth. “The possibilities for Master Magicians could expand indefinitely, or - as is my fear - this spell formation will not open the doors that Mischa believes it will. It won’t be a Pandora's box of creation, it’ll be a weapon’s arsenal. Or worse.”

“You have no imagination,” Mayakovsky spat, taking another long pull from this coffee cup that Penny suspected was probably just vodka by this point. “And no faith. I cannot be the only optimist in this room. I’m fucking Russian.”

“I’m not a pessimist, I’m a realist. Someone has to be.”

“You two need to slow your roll,” Penny interrupted again. Like an old fucking married couple, honestly. “We might not even be able to translate this shit, not like you want. No matter where you think this will end up, we can’t do anything if we can’t run it. I’m not a super computer, I can’t just look at it and make sense of the answer. Fuck, even if we ran the turing machine it’ll just be a 50 mile long paper of 1’s and 0’s.” He looked between the two men with an exasperated expression. “It would take me weeks to even read it, let alone start grouping shit together.”

“Would running it on this Turing machine give us a better idea what we’re dealing with?” Fogg asked clinically. 

“Yes,” Penny admitted after thinking about it. “But only in that we would see how long it ends up being. Or it’ll break the computer. I’m guessing you tried this on a regular computer and that’s what happened.” This he said to Mayakovsky, who shrugged in answer.

“It is magic, trying modern technology was just another long shot. I did not expect much.”

“But it worked on the Turing machine?”

“Some of them.”

Penny scrubbed a hand through his hair, what had started to grow a little longer than he liked, but at least it would give him something to hold on to when he wanted to yank it out later. This is not what he thought he signed up for when Fogg asked for his help. He missed his uber days already.

“Fuck it. All we can do is run it, so let’s run it.” He regretted the words as soon as they were out of his mouth, but he knew he couldn’t take them back. “Enchant the stupid thing so it doesn’t run out of paper. The hit a beach somewhere while it takes forever to print.”

“I do not like beach,” Mayakovsky disclosed without blinking.

“Of course you don’t. Just pick a damn equation so we can get started.”

-

No vacation was had, and Penny mourned for the white sandy beaches he’d been thinking about ever since he’d set foot in Brakebills South weeks prior. But despite all his talk, he couldn’t just leave the bewitched Turing machine alone for days without checking in. He didn’t even make it an hour before he was there picking up the printed part of the absurdly long ribbon and looking at the cells of 1’s and 0’s. He knew it was too early to make sense of it, or even see anything beyond 1’s in places, but at least the little machine was doing its job. 

The spell Mayakovsky chose was a complex one that did many things at once. It created its own space outside of time, like the pocket world that housed the Mirror World, and set up the parameters of existence itself. One of the harder ones, but one of the ones that would take the longest, and be the most unique. If they figured that out, then making a tree would be a piece of cake. Penny checked on it about ten times that first day, with no real progress beyond the long ribbon of cells and numbers.

It took about three days for there to be enough paper for Penny to start cutting it into strips close to twenty feet long (almost the length of one of the labs) and begin layering them. It was something to do, and a way to look at more of the equation all at once. He had no idea what he was looking for but some guttural instinct was pulling him in that direction. He couldn’t explain it to Fogg or Mayakovsky, who were hovering like helicopter parents when they weren’t pouring over the intricate spell formation maps/equations that Mayakovsky had come up with years and years ago. It was all tedious, and insanely boring at times, and the three men ended up getting shit faced almost every night to drown out the headaches produced from the giant clusterfuck. 

At least it was producing something.

Time stretched and collapsed at the same time, and Penny spent most of his days with that tiny over-worked Turing machine, piecing together strips of paper, and circling shit with markers that might be similar. Or have a pattern. Which all ultimately led to nothing and he indeed tried to yank out his own hair on more than one occasion. The whole thing was fucking impossible.

Almost two weeks into their venture, the Turing machine was still chugging out cells of numbers, and Penny was dreaming in Linear Base Binary - he couldn’t fucking escape it. On the day in question he was sitting cross-legged on the floor, meditating in between the 20 foot stretches of numbers, and sometimes astral projecting just to get out of the South Pole. To see something green and alive.

He returned to the room and dreaded opening his eyes. The lab was white as the snowy landscape outside, and the only color besides that was the beige plastic of the Turing machine. But he knew it was time to cut the ribbon and tape it to the bottom of the equation. So he opened them and sighed and the unchanged room. He sliced through the ribbon with scissors, and let the paper flutter behind him like a streamer as he went to the far corner of the room to tape it down, kind of chucked it and missed by half a foot. Fuck he was getting tired of this.

Glancing up from where he’d dropped the paper when he bent down to get it, he saw the cells line up off kilter, and something stood out that made him squint. Most of the equations were all 1’s, because the numbers were _stupidly_ long, but the 0’s in place made by the computer connected diagonally. Sort off. It trailed off in a way, then split and then split again. It was creating a picture - if he shifted everything over by six inches. Four cells.

Working as quickly as he could, Penny untaped parts of the strips surrounding these little streams of connected zeros, and followed the lines. They kept splitting and going off in different directions, so spaced apart they didn’t really cross, but the effect made them look like veins in an arm. Or branches on a tree. 

“Holy fuck.” It took almost an hour, but Penny shifted over the 200 strips of paper and saw the map laid out below him as he stood and looked at the entirety of the picture created in the negative spaces. In fact, as he stood back, moving to a different corner, he swore that there was _another_ picture within the rivers and streams made up of zeros.

“Guys!” he called out the open door near him, knowing Mayakovsky and Fogg were only a few rooms over arguing over spell formations or ethics or some shit. “Get your grumpy old asses in here, you gotta see this!”

Mayakovsky may have actually stumbled onto something after all. 

-

_Mumbai, India_

-

Darsha’s portal emptied out into one of the top floors of a very tall Skyscraper in South Mumbai. The building belonged to a Tech company with so many employees that it never noticed a couple extra hundred faces filing in and out each day. Five of the upper floors were enchanted to be strictly for magic-wielding persons in that part of the world. It appeared that quite a few countries had already formed alliances and companies all their own without including the Western half of the world. 

Julia went immediately to a window as soon as they were through the portal, her head swimming from the intense displacement the magic created. Unlike mirror portals, creating a bridge between two existing objects in two separate places, honest-to-God portals were difficult to cast and powerful to pass through. Her fingertips tingled like they’d fallen asleep, and Julia rubbed her hands together as she glanced down at the city that sprawled as far as the eye could see. She couldn’t make up the different parts of the vein-like streets and sidewalks below, but it burst with color like an unraveled ball of rainbow yarn that was constantly moving. The sun glinted off the other surrounding skyscraper windows, and the coastline that surrounded them. It was astonishing and beautiful and it made Julia feel very small in the best way.

“Ladies,” Darsha said from the other side of the room, catching Julia’s attention as well as Kady’s, who had been doing her own self-care ritual of shaking off the excess magic that clung to her skin and clothes from the portal. “I’d like to introduce my mentor from Rajmachi University, this is Rashid Mahmoud.” A tall man with rich golden brown skin and a kind smile, who brought his hands together and bowed slow and polite, giving Kady and Julia enough time to mirror his movements. Darsha had briefed them on a few simple customs to adhere to during their stay, but the portal had shaken their senses and Julia had almost forgotten everything she’d said. “He’s from Cairo, originally, but has lived and taught here in India for as long as I’ve been alive. Rashid, this is Kady Orloff-Diaz, and Julia Wicker,” she continued, indicating each of them in turn.

“Welcome to Mumbai,” Rashid said in a deep baritone. “Darsha has told me much, but I’m very pleased to meet you.” He definitely had the air of a mentor, as well as the same classically trained poise of a Master Magician. He reminded them much of Dean Fogg, only sober and smiling. “Ms. Orloff-Diaz, you are the one who orchestrated the cooperative spell a couple months ago?” Kady nodded, standing up a little straighter at the other man’s direct attention.

“That’s right.”

“I’m profoundly impressed by that endeavor, you are a remarkable Magician.” He actually said it like he meant it, and Julia grinned wide as she glanced over to see Kady almost glowing with surprise.

“Thank you,” her voice didn’t betray her astonishment, cool exterior as intact as ever, but Julia knew better. Knew Kady better. Inside she was glowing.

“Kady will be joining us for the talks the next couple weeks,” Darsha interjected, also smiling but slyly hiding it. Letting Kady bask for a moment without drawing attention to it. 

“She will be a most valuable addition,” Rashid agreed, nodding to his former apprentice.

“And Julia is the one I told you about, that I’d like to send to Rajmachi or the temples,” Darsha continued. Rashid’s whole expression changed to a studious one, and Julia suddenly realized that if Rashid was Darsha’s mentor then that probably meant they studied the same field of magic theory. “She needs guidance finding her center, and my _hope_ is that-”

“It is one of peace and not of pain,” Rashid finished, the grin returning but small and studious. “I hope so too, that would be most extraordinary.” 

“I’d like to start as soon as I can,” Julia told them both, just as eager to be the center of their experiment as Rashid looked to conduct it. The way Darsha explained everything, it sounded like a psychological study, but to Julia it was just another elective course she needed to throw herself into and crush.

“You should really give yourself a few days to adjust,” Darsha explained gently. “The culture shock can be very intense. India is very different from America.”

“It’s honestly easier for me to just jump in the deep end and start treading water,” Julia said. She wasn’t going to budge on this, and it became clear to the others after a few more protests and shoot downs.

“If that’s really how you feel, we can set up a portal to Rajmachi and get you set up in the morning. If you don’t mind staying in Kady’s room with her for the night.” Darsha still looked hesitant about sending Julia off so early, but she was nothing if not stubborn in her own right to make the girls wait another 24 hours.

“Wait, you mean you’re splitting us up?” Kady asked, sharp and wary.

“Rajmachi is in the Western Ghats, almost 100 kilometers from here,” Rashid told them in his same firm yet kind tone, as if giving commentary in a lecture. “We can set up portals between the two places, but with them being so far apart you would be much more comfortable here than there for the conference.”

“No, that’s not going to work,” Kady said. “If you can set up portals, I can travel back for the conference each day. But I’m staying with Julia at the school.”

“Well, she won’t be _at_ the school,” Darsha said, wringing her hands a little. Kady could be intimidating when she demanded things. “She’ll be at one of our hidden temples, closer to Khandala - a hill station out in the forest. There she’ll be able to connect with herself.”

“Then make a portal out there,” Kady answered simply. “This isn’t negotiable, I’m staying with Julia.”

“Kady,” Julia murmured, leaning over and touching her arm to get her attention, tilting her head behind them towards the wall of windows. “Can I talk to you? Excuse us,” she said softly to Rashid and Darsha, having to all but drag Kady a few feet across the room to talk to her in hushed tones. “You don’t have to do this, I’m a big girl I can take care of myself.”

“Trust me, I know that,” Kady told her in all seriousness. “But I’m not letting anyone split us up when we’re half-way across the world for the first time in our lives. It’s not safe.”

“Kady, seriously it’s fine-”

“I want to,” Kady said. Staring right into Julia’s eyes as she did. “I want to be where you are, and not 100 miles away worrying about you and getting nothing done.”

“Kilometers,” Julia corrected her, trying not to smile at Kady as she narrowed her eyes at her in annoyance. “If that’s really what you want-”

“It is.”

“-then we’ll make it work.” Julia still hadn’t looked away from Kady’s stone-still expression. Through her hard eyes she could see the other woman’s mind churning and roiling within her, a storm that was always there. She reached out and placed a hand on one of her crossed arms, squeezing gently to affirm that she understood, and she saw the storm calm just the smallest amount - enough to ease the tension from the hard lines of her face. 

“Good.” They returned to Darsha and Rashid, but it seemed the two had been conversing on their own for solutions as well. 

“We can set a portal to the school, but we can’t do so near the temple, it’s only a mile hike through the jungle,” Darsha placated. “If you don’t mind the walk, then there’s no reason you both can’t stay at the temple in Khandala.”

“I love long walks,” Kady smirked, arms still crossed but she bumped her hip and shoulder into Julia affectionately, luring a smile from the shorter woman as well. 

-

Julia barely remembered the school of Rajmachi after she and Kady were led just off the grounds and into the mist covered mountain jungle. The land and forest was the most vibrant colors of green, bright as emeralds and ancient grey stone glistening with fresh rain. Small trickles of water flowed downhill in their own paths beneath their feet, surrounding their trek to the temple with waterfalls and bubbling brooks that filled the humid air. It was the most clean and cleansing atmosphere she’d ever been in, and that included Isis’s pocket world filled with golden light back when she’d been a goddess. Her soul felt lighter for it, so when they finally reached the ancient temple it pleased her beyond belief to see it was almost completely engulfed in the terrain.

She didn’t know what she’d expected, but the tiny one story stone building dusted in green moss and almost completely overshadowed by the most beautiful waterfall she’d ever seen was not it. The mist from the water filled the open space and reached them as they left the treeline, a cool refreshing spritz that clung to her skin like freckles. She could _feel_ the magic in that place, in the air, humming in the water and thrumming through every tree limb and green leaf. 

“All of your meditation and studies will be done outside,” Darsha said with a breathless sigh, also soaking up the clean magical air with a deep inhale that physically brightened her face. “The temple is merely an anchor, and where your guide lives. For the most part, you’ll be on your own. This is a spiritual journey that only you can make.” Darsha wouldn’t be around either, she’d be returning to Mumbai before the sun set. She just wanted to make sure her guests were well taken care of and settled in before she did. Darsha was honestly the best.

“So where do we stay?” Kady asked, and Julia was glad. She was too absorbed in everything around her. Her body and soul were starved for the magic that the trees and wind breathed so freely here. She wanted to just lay on the ground and become one with the jungle and never, ever leave. 

“There’s actually a small building down the hill from here, it’s a muggle cabin from a retreat in Khandala, but we did some illusion magic when they opened and it’s where all students stay when they do their spirit journey.” She led them down to the tiny wooden building so blended into the woods no one would have found it if they didn’t know exactly where it was. Made up of single board planks to hold up the frame, and a low wall of boards that came up to about hip height on Kady (Julia was decidedly shorter) the rest was a wire mesh to keep out bugs and birds. Inside, though, was a single room lavish with curtain drapings that could be pulled across the openness to keep out the chill, a nest of blankets and pillows piled together against one wall, and a table and desk both decorated with candles and lanterns. 

“You can get food from the school whenever you like, and keep some things here. There’s a fire pit out front if you feel up to cooking, but I doubt it,” Darsha said not unkindly, smiling at Julia when she looked at her in question. “Your journey will be very tiring, you might have to rely on Kady to bring you food.”

“I got you covered,” Kady said from inside the room, already dropping her duffel bag down to the rug covered floor and muttering a _shit_ under her breath when she realized she still had her shoes on. Kicking them off and carrying them to the doorway. “I forgot.” It was custom to never wear shoes indoors, but with them being in the jungle it was probably also practical. 

“There will be no one here to judge you once I leave,” Darsha said with a smirk, Kady rolling her eyes good-naturedly at the woman’s teasing. “You shouldn’t be expecting anyone either, so you won’t have to dismantle that lovely bed of pillows. Usually they’re divided up between the first years and they all cram in this room for the duration of their spiritual journeys.”

“Sounds cozy,” Julia said distractedly, still dazed at their surroundings. It seemed almost impossible a place could be so beautiful. From their cabin doorway they could see down into the valley and across to Lonavala, a series of geometrically cut hillsides and mountains all the most vibrant green and dressed beautifully with smoky mist. She hadn’t been this stunned since her first time witnessing Fillory. 

“It was smelly, one of the many reasons there’s only half walls,” Darsha reminisced with a dramatic scrunch to her nose. “You won’t have that problem either, I’m envious. Come on, let’s introduce you to the monk here and get you ready for your journey.”

“I start today?” Julia asked, breathless and so ready her body trembled a little at the thought.

“You started the moment you left school grounds,” Darsha smiled. “Or what did you think that feeling in your chest was?” Julia touched her collar bone gently, looking shocked and astounded, and the smile that graced her face was the easiest and most light thing she’d ever felt. Kady smiled at her too, just as light and fond, and Julia’s heart felt like it was going to burst. Three days ago she’d been crying at the fire pit at Brakebills feeling like her chest had been ripped open, and then Kady had come and sat beside her. Now look where she was.

How the fuck did she get so lucky?

-

For weeks Julia spent nearly all her waking hours in the area surrounding the temple. Deep in the rich forest jungle, atop the cool stone outcrops and cliffs, within the mists of the waterfall that powered the bubbling streams. Which in turn wove along the mountain side like pulsing veins. Pumping life, breath, and near sentient magic into everything all around her - as hour upon hour of meditation and deep inner reflection began to chip away at the hard shell encasing her soul.

Julia had barely known it was there, a protective shell that she carried every second of the day, but was her only way of home and comfort. More like a turtle shell than armor. It had grown during her short time attending Brakebills, which had ended up being almost as damaging as her year under Marina’s reign. With Marina she’d treated magic like a drug, a dangerous and addictive drug that had dragged her down as low as she’d ever been. But she’d survived. As a goddess she’d grown exponentially and without limit, but the crash back to mortality had been an even farther fall because of that. Both times. Q’s death on top of all of that had devastated every last shred of humanity left within her until the ends were frayed beyond repair. Raw, exposed nerves that needed to be shielded at all times. Even the miraculous return of her magic couldn’t dampen the damage - because Julia never allowed herself to forget it was there. She couldn’t forget it. Or forgive the world and universe at large for letting it happen. 

But _here_ , among all the astonishing aspects of nature, with that burden finally set down and held carefully instead of inside a cage to preserve it - there was healing. Forgiveness was something she allowed into the cracks, the ones in her heart from the devastation, and the ones beginning to form in that protective shell. She’d developed that shell in the first place so she wouldn’t shatter to pieces every time she tried to complete a spell at Brakebills. In order to feel the pain required to power her magic, but without letting it affect her already decimated soul further. It was no way to live, and with every passing day Julia became more and more aware of how close she’d been to following Quentin’s ghostly footsteps.

As well as how grateful she was that Kady decided to sit beside her that day by the fire pit.

The natural amount of magic that clung to the mist and morning dew, hung between the trees and over the sweeping valleys, was intoxicating. Suffocating, almost; especially the first few days. Julia’s mediation took more effort than she could sometimes even stand.. As soon as she closed her eyes and let the world settle around her, it took everything just to withstand the immense density of magic seeping into her pores and filling her lungs with every breath. It was like drowning. 

This probably wasn’t the normal experience, for the students at Rajmachi, with the amount of magic now in the world leftover by Everett’s demise. But the kind monk at the temple urged Julia to endure - in his own way. Julia did not know his name, and Darsha hadn’t shared it with them either. The old man seemed happy enough without it. He had taken a vow of silence many years ago, decades Julia suspected, but he was more open and encouraging without that burden. For this reason, Julia soon stopped speaking as well when she entered the temple grounds each day. Actions spoke louder than words, with more integrity, and Julia learned to respect and appreciate that with great satisfaction.

In their hut, Julia also spoke less from her new found discipline, but oddly enough Kady filled that silence comfortably with all the exploits happening in Mumbai. Kady and Julia walked through the woods every morning together, parting just outside the temple, where Julia would reside as Kady hiked up to the castle and took a portal back to the metropolis. The conference she’d been invited to be apart of was becoming a month-long affair, with a vast variety of working parts that no one had expected. Kady kept Julia so in the loop that she might as well had been there each day as well, and Julia helped discuss all the problems and solutions with her as best she could - late into the night more often than not. A routine was born between them that was comfortable and productive and the easiest thing to fall into.

Julia would have shared her own progress at the temple, or at least in more detail than the brief summary that said nothing at all, if she even knew how to describe it. But the few times she had tried, staring into the colorful silk canopy above their bed for any kind of guidance or starting point, the words that came to her didn’t even come close to the experience. Kady insisted it must, eyes alight in the dark as she listened to Julia try to convey what she saw each time she entered that space. But even if it dazzled in the slightest, it was still too dull to compare properly.

The closest she had ever come was one evening when a storm blew out the candles in their hut and moved the silk drapings with the breeze. She’d said her sense had changed into variants of color. Which sounded very 60’s acid trip-esque, and wasn’t entirely accurate, but at least it was in the ballpark. But no matter what she saw, or experienced, with each deep dive into her own psyche - Julia, even three weeks later, was still searching for what it all meant. Even as beautiful and perfect as the world now seemed - how did it help her discover that deeper level or power? The one she could tap into, without doubt, and feel the spark of magic ignite with or without her will to do so. 

All she could do was keep trying, and hope to stumble upon a vision of clarity.

Now, this sounded easy enough - but not for Julia. One must understand: Julia Wicker was not one to just let things happen and ‘go with the flow’. _If you build it, they will come._ Blind faith never sat well with her, even during her goddess days and prior when that was the point of it all. At heart, Julia studied. She was an honor student, AP since 3rd grade and the first one to solve any problem thrown her way. Q used to call her a perfectionist, and he was right in some aspects, but Julia needed to pick things apart and figure out how they worked. Only then could she truly understand their function and purpose. Magic was much the same way. That’s why she had believed Brakebills to be her one pure way to learn magic, to _study_ it. She hadn’t gotten all the way to her classification before she’d left, but Fogg had been certain she was a knowledge student. She could have gone so far if her magic hadn’t been stripped from her. What she could have accomplished. 

But this spirit journey, it was the exact opposite of everything she’d done all her life. Any and all study bee sensations that wanted to break free she reserved for Kady and Kady alone. She was the one that needed Julia the valedictorian, the captain of the debate team, the model UN coordinator on weekends except twice a year when she was judging the science fair with Quentin. Overachiever, perfectionist, mediator. There were days she was even tempted to skip her meditation and go with Kady to listen in on the talks and conferences, just to better aide the other woman. But she couldn’t give up on something that wasn’t tailor-made for her. She had to keep trying.

The morning she made her first real break-through had begun like any other. The beginning of their sixth week, in the rich mountains on India, and the serenity of it all had already made itself right at home settled on their skin like morning dew. There was a peace of waking up in the middle of the forest, hearing and smelling and feeling the morning brush against them as the world also woke up with the sun. Julia and Kady got dressed for their morning hike, Julia in fresh clothes that melded with the elements outdoors seamlessly, and Kady half in business-attire with hiking boots and a satchel that held Julia’s laptop for another day of meetings in Mumbai. Together they hiked up the mountain side, and parted with a gentle wave from Julia and a sturdy grasp of her shoulder from Kady. Wordlessly telling each other that they got this, before they split into different worlds. 

Julia wouldn’t speak another word until she saw Kady again at sunset, for as soon as she stepped off the path she was within the temple grounds. She would go to the temple, greet the old monk with a smile and a traditional bow with hands together. The old monk had a welcoming presence and a return smile that beamed, always happy to see the foreign dedicated student of magic. He would lead her to a spot that he knew to have a good concentration of magic, or was within a current of one, and leave her there to begin her mediation and reflection. The monk didn’t need to guide her along by the hand when it came to these studies, because to do so would be fruitless. This was a task only Julia could complete. So she would sit in the place that she felt the most comfortable - on a stone, beside a steady stream, sometimes even just sprawled out on her back on the forest floor - and begin to try and quiet her thoughts.

This was the hardest part. Julia never stopped thinking. 

It usually took a few hours, or the majority of the day, to reach that place of clear internal sight. Her head was so clouded with the past, things that happened to her, things that she had done. Memories of her parents and sisters, growing up with her head buried in a Fillory book right next to Q, and of course - there was always Quentin. Once she started thinking about Quentin, remembering him, mourning him, it was hard to stop. The clouds of memory in her mind darkened and collided like a thunderstorm, and it was impossible to push them aside, to not feel everything so intensely. Especially with the amount of magic flowing through the world around her. It became blinding, to the point she could see and hear and feel everything only in variants of color. Spectrums behind her eyes like fireworks. She couldn’t concentrate on them, or make sense of them, and it was so _frustrating_.

Until they day that it wasn’t.

She was beside that giant waterfall, getting her hair wet with mist and spray from the falling rocks, her lightweight clothes soaked after only 30 minutes, and she knew somewhere in the back of her mind that she would need to move before she got herself sick. But something was happening that kept her from moving a single inch. Her breath came in shallow movements, barely moving her rib-cage for fear of shaking off this strange sensation of knowing. Eyes closed and mouth slightly parted to ease her breath as best she could, Julia concentrated on this tiny spark that she could feel deep in the back of her mind. It was like a tickle to begin with, as scarce as if feeling someone’s eyes on you, but it felt so familiar. Warm and fond and complicated, but not divine. If she had even a hint of it feeling like Our Lady Underground or any of the other gods and goddesses Julia would have jumped out of her mediation quick enough to give whiplash. She would have dunked her head in the stream if need be.

But no, this was human. This was real, concentrated adoration; a love of family that had nothing to do with blood. It was leeching and encouraging and everything that felt like was missing from the deepest tresses of her heart. Her soul longed for the feeling, but not knowing what it was made her so cautious. It had never been there before, or not so clearly. She wanted to reach out and grab it, like a firefly in the night, but was too gun-shy of the sting. It could be anything, even something left over from her goddess days. Why, today of all days, when she’d done nothing to warrant this deep clarity in her head did she see this spark so prominently?

The more she inspected it, the more she could see those variants of color once more, iridescent like a spotlight just off center. Reflecting kaleidoscope patterns that threatened to overtake her mind and vision as they always did, so Julia drew back and focused on the light as a whole. Not of the color and shape of it, she wasn’t sure it would even be a shape, but of the feeling. Could this be what she had been looking for? It felt too… placed. A sign, or a trap. She fucking _hated_ feeling like something was always dragging her on a string from one ‘destiny’ to the next, when all she really wanted was -

Fuck, she just wanted to live without hurting. Without looking over her shoulder, for her own safety as well as others. She wanted to live peacefully, as she had with Kady the past few weeks, to explore and study what she could do with this force beyond most’s comprehension. She truly did love magic, and everything it brought to her. But she wanted it to stop taking away everything she held dear. Everything she took for granted for so long: her freedom, her body, her soul, her future, her friends.

Quentin.

She wanted to love freely and without remorse. She wanted to love the world around her, and her friends, her terrible family, and trust someone enough to let them love her back. Was it really too much to ask to not be afraid to let go of all her reservations that much? To feel the warmth of a smile turned her direction and bask in it instead of counting the moments until it was gone.

That was it.

Her chest constricted at the realization. The feeling the tiny spark emitted. It was the warmth she felt with Q would smile at her over some private joke they shared because they were dorks, or when Kady bumped shoulders with her in the small hut they shared because they were clever as fuck and deserved the world. It was the thing she missed most, but was too afraid to accept after it had been ripped away over and over again. Why was this emotion, this feeling being laid bare before her in her own mind. Who put it there, and why? 

Tired of the unanswered questions, Julia brought the spark closer to the forefront of her mind, and let the streams of light and color begin to play across her vision. Seriously, fuck it. It had been six weeks, and she’d gotten nowhere in knowing what she was even looking for. If something wanted to give her cheat codes. So be it.  

She reached for the spark, and gently touched it. The explosion of light, hues, visions of worlds beyond, and everything else in between hit her all at once. Blinding her and sending her reeling back until she physically fell over onto the stone outcrop by the waterfall. 

Time stretched and went on and on… and on… and on…

Eons of light and stars, galaxies and nebulae she used to have posters of on her bedroom walls, every memory she could physically pull from the tangled ball of yarn it had become was laid out and played vividly. Every emotion wracked her chest until tears streamed from her eyes, and she thought if she had to feel one more sorrow, or horror, or joy she would burst. 

Until it was over, and Julia was left staring at the moving leaves against the sky above her, and arms were wrapping around her to help lift her up. She could see the world moving, but she felt no place in it, her feet off the ground as she was moved somewhere else. Somewhere more -

_-soft, warm, fresh rain and green leaves, dark hair and pale skin, silk sheets and feather pillows that smelled like-_

-like home. 

-

_Fillory_

-

The land of the centaurs hadn’t changed in 300 years. Truly, it probably hadn’t changed in the past thousand years, all the back to the days of the Chatwins, but to Eliot it looked the exact same as when he had left Q there to heal after the battle with The Beast. A plethora of rolling hills that broke up into small mountains, blanketed in dense forests fit for a fairy tale, everything the brightest green and clearest blue - even the creeks and streams seemed alight with colors more vibrant than the rest of Fillory. Which was saying something. The very earth breathed with each breeze that wove through the grass and between the trees. The land and forests had healing properties that the centaurs never disclosed to humans, much to every High King’s chagrin, but shit was it effective. Only a week and one minor surgery later, Eliot was probably in better shape physically than he’d been in his entire life. 

However, it would have been much easier to heal if not for his near manic worry over Margo’s absence.

To say Eliot had freaked the fuck out when he’d woken from his surgery two days after arriving at the land of the centaurs was an understatement. Not after everything he’d went through only weeks prior, waking up two days after the Monster had been literally cut from his body only to find Quentin dead and his entire life crumbling beneath his feet. It was too fresh, too real, too much of a fucking _coincidence_ and Fillory didn’t fucking do coincidences. He’d sent both human and centaur scouts to the Wellspring, and even sent word to Ave the ‘Dark King’ back at Whitespire, but no one had seen her for six days. Six fucking days, where the human nurses/servants of the centaur doctors threatened to tie him down to his horse-height bed to allow him to heal and avoid undoing all the progress he’d made. Eliot had been given wooden skin grafts and bones in his spine and lower rib cage, to better aide the healing of his internal organs, and his whole midsection felt lighter for it - an odd sensation that left him insanely top heavy and had him toppling over the first few days. With his own height and the added furniture on stilts, that was a long fall that left many dark bruises. But after six days of no word on Margo, and his wounds healed for the most part, Eliot woke with the sun on the seventh prepared to leave (against horse-doctor orders) in search of her himself. 

“Child of Earth, where are you going?” a deep voice said from somewhere behind and above him as Eliot finished gathering supplies and his things. His cane already leaning against one of the legs of the bed. He wasn’t going to take any chances on another nasty fall when he probably had a long way to go.

“Off to find Margo, the _other_ former High King I’ve asked about a thousand times,” Eliot answered not as kindly as he wanted. He wasn’t mad at the centaurs, he was more angry at himself - he shouldn’t have split them up. First rule of adventure movies, don’t split up the band. Otherwise it becomes a horror movie, and everyone knows how those end.

“No one told you? She was sighted yesterday morning on the other side of Whitespire. Heading into the Northern Marshes.” Eliot whipped around, staring at the centaur who uttered everything as if commenting on the weather.

“No, no one told me,” he snapped, still on edge but feeling it ebb away bit by bit with his slowing heartbeat. She was alive, and on a quest of her own. Isn’t that what he told her to do? “Why the fuck would she go there?” The Northern Marshes were not the highlight of Fillorian hospitality, many disappeared among the bogs and were never heard of again. 

“I don’t know, but now that you are aware - you will stay and finish our regime,” the centaur said as if speaking to a child, not asking and barely even feigning a suggestion. Eliot nodded once, resigned and definitely not scowling at his host. Nor did he growl out an ‘I’ve got it’ when the doctor offered to call in servants to help him back into bed. 

The fact Margo wouldn’t even send word that she was off on her own tangent of their adventure grated on his nerves, and Eliot did his best to not be irritated at her about it. This was a new facet of his personality he was forcing into place, though the jagged edges didn’t seem to fit and it hurt his head more than it helped his heart - he didn’t want to be mad at anyone around him. He didn’t want to spend one, petty moment angry at someone who could be gone the next day. He’d learned his lesson the hard way in that aspect.

Sure, he’d lost people before - and in ways beyond death. His family back in Indiana, who had only loved him out of a displaced sense of kinship that ran more through tradition than affection, and of course there had been Mike - who hadn’t even known who he was when The Beast had let him go, a mere hour before Eliot had had to kill him. Both devastating in their own light, on different ends of the spectrum.

But Quentin.

God damnit. 

Quentin had been _real_ , in ways Eliot hadn’t known were possible. Quentin had meant more to him than all the people mentioned before combined, and was someone who had genuinely cared for him in return. Who had loved him, in more ways than Eliot deserved - and who had deserved someone far better. Someone who hadn’t been afraid to see what was in front of him until it was too fucking late. Now - the world without him was muted, stilted, on a three second delay where the video and audio don’t match up so it ruins the entire experience. Even Fillory in all its brilliance and ridiculous fantasy was dull, an amusement park ride that had lost its luster. But here he was, on one last ride just for the nostalgia of it. 

In the one place that felt the closest to Quentin’s heart. 

But this spell, this complicated Fillorian miracle that the forest witch had bestowed upon them, it almost didn’t seem real. Sure it was complicated and had a lot of missing pieces and moving parts, but it still felt too convenient. Too soon. Eliot wanted to turn a blind eye to the dubious aspects that screamed like neon signs, but it was in his nature to be cautious and all too aware when something seemed like a good thing. An incredibly good thing that had just fallen into his lap. If it looked like a trap and smelled like a trap, it probably had a scooby-doo-esque door wanting to swing out of the wall and reveal the evil plot twist. Before he’d been handed the keys to the kingdom by a magic knife, it would have _also_ been in his nature to dive right in to these evil plot twists just for shits and giggles - if the mood suited him. But this was about Quentin. As often as he told himself it was too important to risk it, the other half of his brain reminded him it was too important _not_ to risk it. Risk everything. His whole brain, both sides, were soaked in grief and regret - so this was really where Margo was supposed to come in and be his conscience. Except she wasn’t here. 

No where to go but up.

“I have a question,” he said to the centaur before it had managed to turn around to exit his recovery tent. The doctor looked lightly annoyed that he had to turn all the way around again, more aware than a horse of where he placed his hooves, but no less awkward about it. Eliot bit back a smirk that would have felt more vengeful than the situation called for, trying instead to focus on having the centaur’s attention. He wasn’t quite sure how to ask for the information he needed. “What do you do with the things you remove in surgery? The bones and such.” It sounded very forced to ask that question and make himself sound sane and practical, but the centaur didn’t seem fazed. Then again, he thought of Eliot as nothing more than a slightly intelligent animal. For once their prejudice might work in his favor.

“We discard them,” the centaur explained, again in that condescending tone that Eliot had to _not_ laugh at. The laugh would not be a nice one. 

“What if they belong to an important person, such as a King? Because they would belong to Children of Earth?” Eliot pried, needling his way to his point.

“Such as yourself?” the centaur asked, as if he knew what Eliot was getting at. Eliot smiled thinly, and it felt as brittle as it looked. 

“Yes, but it would have been many years ago. Over 300 years.” 

“Human years,” the centaur elaborated. Eliot didn’t roll his eyes, he swore he didn’t. Centaurs in all their pretentious, intolerable species-biased bullshit had the most ridiculous traditions that purely existed to set them apart from the rest of Fillory. Like having a 15-fucking-month year calendar. NO REASON. Just to be dicks. “If that was the case, then it was probably kept to be given as tribute.”

“Tribute,” Eliot blinked heavily, not quite sure he heard correctly. “Tribute to… who? Ember and Umber?”

“No, don’t be ridiculous,” the centaur near snorted in disbelief. “What would they do with bones? No, it goes to the bone-eater. A demon-like creature that lives North of here in the forest.”

“And you give it tribute, so it lets you stay here?” This was a part of the land of the centaurs he’d never heard of before, and his High King ears perked from centuries before. Back when the information would have been vital footholds for negotiations. 

“It controls some of the lands and the magic that flows through it, the rift that allows us to keep someone on the edge of death suspended so we can heal,” the centaur doctor was saying all of this absent-mindedly - as if Eliot wouldn’t be able to really grasp it fully. But after his explanation, he seemed to come back to himself and rethink how much he was revealing to a human. “We give it bones of important creatures to satiate it.”

“Does it actually _eat_ the bones?” Eliot made a face at the thought, and tried to swallow back the bitter disappointment if this demon thing actually did. This had been his Hail Mary for the spell. If Quentin’s collarbone and arm bones from years ago weren’t actually around anywhere, then he really had no fucking clue where to get bones for the witch’s spell. If the universe was listening at all, then he’d really like the stupidly convenient coincidences to keep on coming. 

“No, I’m pretty sure it just collects them. It lives at the bottom of an old well in the Northern forest, we kind of just drop them in there and the world keeps turning as it should.”

“The bone-eater… demon… lives in a well,” Eliot pieced the bits together and had to second guess his own memory, because honestly - coincidences or not that was sloppy. “It doesn’t happen to also be a portal to a Feudal Era...” At the centaur’s confused, incredulous stare Eliot muttered a ‘guess not’ and swallowed back all other Toonami references he could muster. 

“If that’s all, I do have patients to check on - and you’re late for physical therapy,” the centaur almost snapped. Confused and annoyed at being such. They really liked to think themselves above everything else in Fillory, even the ability to not understand Earth references. It was a pet peeve that Eliot and Margo had always loved to exploit during their meetings with the centaur leaders when they’d been in Whitespire. Needless to say, all negotiations went South during their rule. 

He didn’t bother to call out a ‘thank you’, not a second later he was alone in the room with the tent sheets moving in the breeze and only the silence of the forest outside to keep him company. It was better this way, he had much to think about.

-

Eliot waited two days to gather his strength and formulate his plan into something solid and plausible. Allowing the ‘nurses’ to fuss over him and walk him through various physical therapy-type exercises to aide in his healing process. He had a handle on his balance by then, a full week and a half after his surgery, and was able to move about in a very lofty and careful manor. This definitely took great strides towards making him appear more like himself, but to Eliot he had simply become an even more realistic puppet. Made of glass. That was still insanely top heavy. Bumping shoulders with someone too harshly was going to send him crashing to the ground like a comedy actor from the 20’s. 

But the morning came after he had decided his maneuvering abilities were good enough, and once again Eliot was up before the sun. He’d only been sleeping so much the past week because the centaurs had some _amazingly_ kick ass drugs that they slipped into his drink when they noticed he wouldn’t sleep through the night. He’d finally caught on and purposefully dumped it into the grass when the night nurse wasn’t looking the night before, allowing him to stay awake the whole night. Finalizing everything in his head. He watched the sun break over the trees, numb to everything except a trace of content in that he knew his plan. His starter plan. He had no idea where in the forest he was going, but someone in this damn hospital had to. He would spend the morning learning the route to this bone-eaters well (Eliot still snorted every time he thought of it, he really couldn’t help but call it that for nostalgia’s sake), and then he would set out after lunch so no one would come looking for him until hours later. 

Eliot also felt _decidedly_ better about confronting a bone-collector demon that lived in a well during the day time. Again, overused movie tropes would one day save his life - he swore. He should have made that bet with Margo during their first year; he’d own half her trust fund by now.

A very talkative centaur, young and very much not an actual medical worker in the facility, ended up being Eliot’s key source. He ran into him on the grounds just outside his wing for post-surgical patients, and didn’t even bother trying to be worried that the young preteen centaur would tattle on him. Just act like you’re exactly where you’re supposed to be (especially when you’re not), it had been his motto all through college and it had gotten him very far in life so far. The young man/boy didn’t need much convincing, Eliot speculated one of his parents probably worked there, for he practically gushed about the legend of _the bone-eater demon_. Full-on geek mode, it was bittersweet and oddly comforting, and Eliot swallowed back any and all emotion he could muster as the kid literally drew him a damn map of the whole area. Eliot again realized how only a year ago he would have been salivating at the information being handed to him so easily. The centaurs were either much less secretive, centuries later, or they had let their guard down because no one had taken an interest in them for a few generations. He doubted Dark King Ave grilled them for anything substantial during his reign. 

So with a detailed map in one hand, and his cane from Earth in the other, Eliot set out into the dense surrounding woods not fifteen minutes after his nurse had dropped off his food. He’d forced himself to nibble on a bit of it, he wasn’t dumb - he was still healing after all - but it would also look less suspicious if it seemed he’d eaten some of it. The few bites he managed did nothing for the roiling in his stomach, a whole new set of nerves making themselves known like angry bees in every limb. Fuck, he hated being anxious; it knocked off the poise he used so frequently in events such as this. Conversations with people or entities high above his own stature, to help him into scholarships or an extra letter grade. Country clubs and elite circles. He’d honed this special skill back in his first years of college, a part of his project to remake himself, and it worked so surprisingly well that Eliot buried himself in the system. Like a tick. The problem with ticks is it’s almost impossible to make them let go, and when they do they don’t ever get to latch back on. He could barely remember his old routines. He’d let go so long ago.

Quentin had made him let go, had made him try on new parts of himself and learn more about who he wanted to _be_ as a person, instead of who he wanted to appear as. But right now he couldn’t think about that. Eliot physically shook his head to get rid of the train of thought that wanted to spiral into the maudlin abyss his mind tended to settle in more often than not these days. He needed his head in the game, Q needed him, so he needed to be his buoyant, charming self and get this demon creature to somehow make a deal with him. He needed Quentin’s bones, he needed to do everything he could for the spell of the forest-witch. It was the least he could fucking do, given everything that had happened. He would give all he had, if it came to that. 

Quentin deserved that much.

It took him the better part of the afternoon to locate the well, with a ragged lean-to covering the entrance to keep out the rain. The only reason for that would be there was no actual water in this well. Eliot knew he was in the right place. It was a high-walled well, made of old grey river stones worn smooth and round, and came up to his hip as Eliot approached the side. The structure made of wood was tall, obviously built by centaurs, and the wood didn’t look so haphazard up close. Repairs and adjustments were made as needed, recently, and Eliot wondered how often they gave ‘tribute’ to this well-demon to keep the flow of magic constant and in their favor.

He glanced over the side of the well, not able to see the bottom with how the structure’s roof blocked out the sun. “It’s going to be deep as fuck, isn’t it,” he muttered, and even those quiet words echoed all the way down the stone expanse. At least it wouldn’t end in a portal. He made a face as a thought occurred that if it _did_ then maybe he’d have a solution for Margo’s Josh and Fen problem. But that was too many coincidences in one month and Eliot dreaded what it meant if their stars aligned that perfectly. Nothing good. He hated being playthings of the divine, and had had enough of it for a fucking lifetime. The thought made him scowl, and he sighed heavily - which also echoed down the well.

Putting his cane under his arm, he brought his hands up to cast a spell he’d learned in his first month at Brakebills. Something he could do blackout drunk, he had learned, because it was so close to his discipline, and also something he didn’t think he’d tried in years. Levitation. Like hell was he going to just jump down the well without knowing if anything would be there to catch him. He was so tired of being injured all the time. 

His natural telekinetic senses adjusted to the Fillorian circumstances without Eliot even having to try, and he felt the weightlessness that had been tormenting him for a week take over his entire body - evening out the sensation and returning him to such a relaxed state the smallest traces of a smile threatened the corners of his mouth. He lifted himself into the air a good six inches and hovered to test the hold he had, but it wasn’t needed. Levitating was as simple as breathing to him, as was moving objects near him; he used to get ready in the morning by merely making products and toiletries come to him and do the work themselves - but that had also been a long time ago. He breathed deep, relishing in the familiar feeling draped around him, and lifted himself further over the lip of the well and down into the darkness - without so much as a swish of his long-overcoat disturbing the silence inside the round walls. 

It was indeed a long way down, a good hundred feet, but his shoes touched the damp dirt with a soft muffled sound, and Eliot quickly cast a floating light that would stay tethered to him just behind his head. Illuminating the space without blinding him. The well had opened up into a whole chamber, large as a house and fairly empty save for a few scraps of bones buried in the soil. He glanced up to see that the well had actually ended at the ceiling of the chamber, and something had dug out the space and tunnels leading off it. Something _big._  

 _Please don’t be a centipede_ , he thought to himself, once again remembering the old anime show that aired only at 2am on weekdays years ago. Or at least in his time zone back at his parent’s house in Illinois. The last thing he wanted to try and sweet talk was a giant centipede demon with the upper naked torso of a woman. That did not sound like a fun time. 

He glanced about and found five different tunnels leading off in every direction, which didn’t help him in the slightest. Fuck it. “Hello!” he called, letting his voice echo loudly down every tunnel and then listening with bated breath for the sound of anything echoing back. Only pulsating silence answered him, with his heartbeat loud in his chest and ears. “Hello, bone-eater, are you still here?” he tried to not sound like he was taunting it, but Eliot knew it probably could come off that way when distorted by the tunnels. Fuck his anxiety, he had shit to do!

Scraping of a hard material across rock, like a giant insect moving about in a hole, came from his right and Eliot’s head whipped over to the blackness within. He peered in, motioning the light closer, and he did _not_ like the shapes moving about inside. They were from floor to ceiling, and Eliot felt very small in comparison. 

“I was sent a live one? How lazy of them,” a voice hissed, gender undetermined and pitch high and raspy. It moved forward with more than two limbs, hell more than four or five, that clicked against the rock and brought the creature’s giant body closer into Eliot’s light. As it became more clear in the shadows, Eliot bit the inside of his cheek and set his jaw so his face did not betray him because - _fuck_. He took it back, he wanted the centipede lady.

The bone-collector was a giant fucking spider. 

Margo would know more geek references to this than he would, but none of it came to mind to comfort him when the creature sat at the entrance of the tunnel, blocking the entire thing and towering over him. 

“I’m not a tribute,” Eliot blurted out before he could think of anything else. _NOT FOOD_ . That was the most important part of the whole situation in that moment, until he could remember why he’d come down a well in a Fillorian forest in the first place. Something stupid like love would be the only reason. “My name is Eliot, I am a Child of Earth and former High King of Fillory, and I’ve come to ask you about your collection.” Great, all poise and charm were out the window. This thing was fucking terrifying, it’s fangs or whatever the fuck those were beneath it’s eight eyes were as long as his _arm_.

“An admirer, how rare,” the creature whispered again, but to Eliot it was loud and near screeched at him. “Would you like to see it?”

“I would,” Eliot forced out as kind as he could. “And I have an inquiry about a particular piece. A tribute from centuries ago from another Child of Earth.”

“Which one? For I have many,” the demon told him, and Eliot tried to get his flight or fight instinct to calm the fuck down. He was a highly skilled, classically trained Magician that could squash this monster like the bug it was if need be - and the demon was actually being very courteous to him. Like a guest in it’s home. Something about it made him not want to trust it, but again - that could be prejudiced against spiders in general. Hadn’t he just been bitching about the centaur’s being species-est shits? 

“300 years ago a King named Quentin had his shoulder and some ribs removed after fighting The Beast,” Eliot said, conversationally and well-mannered. Pull it the fuck together Waugh, the spider had more manners than him so far. “I was told you may have been given those bones, and I’m looking to acquire them.”

The spider-demon bristled at his last words, moving it’s fangs angrily. “You mean to steal from me.”

“No! Of course not,” Eliot blanched, throwing in exaggerated movements to easily be seen in the dark. “No, I wish to trade with you. Whatever you wish for them, that’s within my power.” He really hadn’t come up with anything good he could trade to the demon on his long walk over, except maybe one of his own bones. If he hurried back to the hospital, he might be able to save them from being ‘discarded’, and hope the few rib bones removed would be enough. He had been a High King.

“It would have to be something of equal, or greater worth,” the spider demon told him, still eyeing him harshly with all eight of its unblinking eyes. “I prefer greater. You do not have it with you, I would smell it.” That was unnerving.

“I wanted to know what I was getting into first,” Eliot fibbed easily. “I had not expected such a polite creature such as yourself.”

“Flattery gets you nowhere, Child of Earth,” the spider demon said, but Eliot thought he detected a hint of amusement in its voice. “If you can give me something of great worth, then I will trade you the bones in my collection. I do have the ones you seek.” Eliot smiled thinly, and nodded in agreement, but his eyes were alight at the confirmation that his hunch had been _right_. Quentin’s bones were here. They could complete the spell as soon as he had them, and the hair he knew for a fact was back on some of Quentin’s old clothes at Brakebills. Now he just needed the bones in hand and he’d be able to breathe easier.

Shit - he’d cut off a fucking foot if he had to.

-

_The Library_

-

Bright, fluorescent-esque light clung to Alice’s fingers, glowing softly and warm to the touch as she rubbed at her temples while hunched over her desk. Eyes closed and praying for her stress-migraine to pass. She was there to hide as best she could, which sounded counter-intuitive since she was hiding in _her_ office - but as it turns out, it was the only place she could successfully get five minutes to herself. Alice had callers during all office hours, and sometimes even after hours, every. Single. Day. So she had tried to find solace in the stacks within the first two weeks of her new station. In all probability, there had to be an infinite number of places to get lost in with how many buildings and floors there were on this goddamn planet. But someone, somehow, always found her. If she wasn’t in her office apparently that made her _available_ for inquiry and grievances.

Alice highly doubted Everett had this much involvement in the day to day problems of the library. It was ridiculous. Either his reign of terror and bureaucracy had kept all employees at arms length of the man, when he’d been in charge, or rumors of Alice’s efficiency in leadership made everyone see a chance to make many - _many_ \- overdue changes put into motion. Or they were testing her limits in what they could get away with. 

Either way, she did _not_ have time for it.

“Alice,” came Zelda’s pristine voice from her doorway, paired with the clicking of her heels on the tile floor. Hands raised in her usual posture and long skirt swishing about her ankles as she strided into the office. 

“No,” Alice said without opening her eyes, or ceasing the migraine spell. “Whatever it is, no. I’m tired, I have a killer headache, and I have too much to do that is far more important. Whatever it is can wait until the board meeting tomorrow.” 

Zelda paused, pressing her lips together as she chose her words carefully. “You know you’re doing a miraculous job these past weeks.”

“Thanks.”

“And I don’t say that lightly.”

“Everyone else does,” Alice murmured almost inaudibly, but Zelda had ears like a hawk and merely quirked her mouth in a small smile.

“Or, perhaps you are actually making a much needed impact on everything here-”

“What did you need, Zelda?” Alice’s patience was about as thin as a sheet of paper. Today had been her first day in the past three that she’d been able to actually research the problem at the foundations of the building. It was the problem that haunted her the most, in the sea of petty squabbles and regulation changes. She had been up to her ears in lore all morning, researching ancient scrolls she’d requested the week before that told the history of the beginnings of The Library. Of the world of The Neitherlands that The Library was built on. Which was an excruciating process when she had to learn new dead languages in between each scroll in order to even translate the records. 

Her findings, however, were far more disturbing than she had predicted.

After hours and hours of fact checking, Alice’s reigning theory was both daunting and terrifying. She believed that The Neitherlands might have begun as a testing ground, a circuit board for the Old Gods, the ones that she and everyone else had been ready to interact with when fighting the monsters not a month or two before. Everything she was reading pointed towards this, or something like it. Beings of great power were spoken of the most, but coincidences were not in their repertoire and she didn’t want to bet on anything other than what she already knew to exist. But this meant that The Library had built their entire society on its surface, spreading in between the fountain portals and even terraforming to their liking. Like a virus, or a parasite. But dressed up to look sophisticated. 

So what was being done below the foundations? Either the Old Gods were erasing magic’s coding source for pure maintenance reasons, like fragmenting a hard-drive to clear up space and ease processing - or, worst case, they were removing it _permanently_. Changing magic at it’s very core because it had gotten so out of hand as of late, because the mortals were perverting and damaging it in ways not intended. As if the Old Gods were disappointed parents of unruly children, so they were taking away their toys. 

Alice was fucking worried, to put it lightly. What the fuck were they supposed to do? 

“Your request was approved,” Zelda informed Alice, whisking a form and file seemingly out of thin air and offered them to her. “For a mediation room, I’m here to set up a scheduled time. I’ve taken over inter-regional relations since we lost much of that department during the… attack.” 

“Oh,” Alice felt her whole face shift, and the pounding in her skull quieted to bearable levels. Zelda was talking about the in-between rooms, encapsulated from time. Alice had worked out what Penny’s cryptic message had meant about a meeting, after discretely discussing the matter with her assistant, Crissy. The meeting would have to be held in such a place because - though they worked in the same order - Penny was still dead, and she was not. She couldn’t just travel to the underworld for a meeting, and he couldn’t come to her. It had to be set up in advance. Alice had been waiting to hear news about her request, but she hadn’t expected to hear anything for another two weeks. “That was fast.”

“It pays to be the head of the snake,” Zelda answered glibly. “So to speak.”

“Yes,” Alice agreed, pushing her hair behind her ear as she tried to think about the week ahead of her. “How soon can I be penciled in? I assume being the head of the snake also means I get priority.” She also assumed that meant she could summon Penny for the meeting without having to consult with him. She was the head honcho around here, after all. 

“We can get you in first thing in the morning,” Zelda said with a smile. “And send a priority message to whomever you need to speak with. Though, I have a hunch who it is.” Alice’s piercing stare made Zelda drop her smile and look a little more reserved. Alice hadn’t forgotten that Zelda had let Penny die from the poison room, but saved herself and Kady. Zelda had a long way to go to redeem herself, and she knew it. She whipped up a clipboard from nowhere and had a pencil in her hand before she finished clearing her throat. “So, 8am sound okay?”

“Perfect,” Alice was also writing it into her planner notebook, she had a handful of meeting in the afternoon. Although it wouldn’t really run together even if the meeting took hours. The mediation room was literally a space outside of time, since it ran differently in different sectors and branches. She could be in there for basically ten seconds and have spent hours talking with Penny. 

A thought struck home like lighting, and Alice’s hand paused in the middle of writing the room number Zelda rattled off. If the room was outside of time, it wouldn’t affect anyone else who might be interested in attending the same meeting. She could think of a few who just might.

Snapping her eyes back up to Zelda, the dim desk light glinting off her glasses, the look alone immediately got the older woman’s attention. “You used to be able to summon people from Earth here in an instant, you did it to Penny quite often - was it just because he was a traveler?”

“Oh, no that’s not required,” Zelda said. “It’s a spell, we can bring anyone here from any realm, as long as we know their exact coordinates and whereabouts. And that it won’t interfere with their story.” Zelda made sure to point this out with a physical hand motion to match it. “You would just need to consult their books.”

Alice nodded, and looked back at her calendar in front of her. If she timed it right, it could work. “I would like to know that spell, tonight if you can. Then I’ll need the updated books of my friends.” She looked up to Zelda’s surprised expression. “I know they’re in this branch, you can send Crissy for them on your way out.” 

Zelda didn’t protest, just nodded with a thin smile, and spun on her heel to exit the room. She knew when she’d been dismissed, and Alice had a lot of work to do before she could sleep that night.

If she could sleep at all.

-

_Khandala, India_

-

Early morning sunlight finally woke Julia from her deep dreamless sleep. Her head still felt full, cotton-like cobwebs filling all the in between spaces so she couldn’t piece two thoughts together coherently. Birds and the wind in the trees sung softly as she looked about her canopy hut of thin silk curtains - that did nothing to block the rising sun. She could hear Kady moving about in the hut opposite their bed, and for the life of her Julia had no idea how she got there.

“Hey,” Kady’s soothing deep tones approached her and Julia felt the bed of pillows shift as she sat beside her on the ground. “You feeling okay?” Julia managed to nod and sit up, taking a water bottle Kady offered as she looked about her. Did the moment by the temple even happen? It felt more like a fever dream than something that actually occurred, but she _felt_ different. Something in her felt unlocked, in a way that couldn’t be locked up again. It was an uneasy feeling, but she liked how it felt the more she got used to it. 

“What happened?”

“Something weird,” Kady answered cryptically. “I had to carry you here, you were so out of it. The old monk at the temple didn’t seem worried when I came looking for you, even when I freaked and tried to snap you out of it. I guess it was something that was supposed to happen.”

“I can’t even describe it,” Julia told her. Her voice felt raspy and thin, like she’d been screaming - but not in a bad way. More like the night after a concert where she sung all the songs at the top of her lungs in the crowd. She felt drained, but at ease, in the same way. “It was all colors and patterns and emotions that don’t have names. I think I broke something open,” she looked at Kady to help center her thoughts, “but I wasn’t the one who lead me there. Something helped me.”

“Our Lady Underground?”

“I fucking hope not,” Julia mumbled, drinking some more water to soothe her throat. “I’m sick of divine intervention. But it didn’t feel like anything ethereal. It felt mortal. It felt like-” she trailed off, not sure if she should bring it up because it sounded crazy. Kady had a thing about getting your hopes up over nothing, and this was the epitome of nothing; no proof. But still, she couldn’t help it. That spark had felt so familiar. “-like Quentin.”

Kady stared at her, and Julia could see everything that the woman wanted to say but couldn’t bring herself to after the state she’d found Julia in the day before. She didn’t need to, Julia knew how it sounded. So she shook her head and looked away, not needing a lecture that Kady was trying to put into gentler words than was her outright instinct. She pushed her hair behind her ear and tried to shake off the feeling of reprimand.

They didn’t need to talk about it anymore.

“You leaving soon?” Julia asked instead. It was about the time of morning that she and Kady would be heading into the forest on their trek up the mountainside. Julia wasn’t so sure she could do another meditation session like the previous one so soon. Playing hookie for the first time in six weeks couldn’t really be that bad - and Kady was still in her sleepwear.

“Not for a few hours, we had some problems yesterday and there’s going to be a meeting around lunch to discuss it,” Kady didn’t like dropping subjects but she was letting the mention of their dead friend slide for the moment. It wouldn’t be the first time.

“What happened?” Julia asked.

Kady just shook her head in response, “it’s a long story, and I need coffee before I get into it. I was going to ask you for help, but you look like you need more sleep.”

“No, no more sleep,” Julia insisted. “I didn’t even dream, I feel rested enough. Coffee will help.” They moved outside the one room hut where Kady had already started the fire and kettle hanging over it. With steaming mugs in their hands and the cool humidity frizzing their hair, they bundled up on the steps and watched the sky over the valley completely lighten in an array of colors all the way to the clearest blue. 

“I was going to play hookie,” Julia broke the silence, and Kady glanced at her out of the corner of her eye. Taking a sip to mask how determined she in talking Julia into staying in bed the rest of the day, instead of enduring more internal soul searching. “But what if I went with you to the lunch-in? You can catch me up, and then maybe having another perspective might help? What was the fight even about?”

“It wasn’t really a fight,” Kady murmured lowly. “We just learned about a cell of Magicians a couple floors below that had been making their own plans about how the Eastern half of the world should be run, and it’s not anything like what we’ve been trying to achieve. The exact opposite.”

“The thing you were worried about,” Julia prompted, without calling it what it was. Or what she’d dubbed it in her own head. Hedgewitch Legion of Doom. 

“Maybe, it’s sounding like it.” 

“Then I’m definitely coming with you,” Julia decided, draining her coffee to help wake herself up. “Tell me everything.” Kady couldn’t help but smile at the shift of decisiveness, biting her lip as she shook her head in disbelief. But before she could say a word, the two vanished without so much as a change in the wind.

-

_Brakebills South_

-

“WHAT IS IT?” Penny heard Mayakovsky holler from down the hall, not sounding like he’d even gotten up from his chair. Or put down his vodka. 

“JUST GET IN HERE!” He hollered back, moving to a different angle of the room and shifting more of the strips of code and cells. Following the lines of zeros that created the negative space and formed pictures. Vast, excruciatingly large pictures, but the more he looked at them the more he could make out what they might be. The vein-like trails were just the interior of the larger picture, creating the substance inside. The image itself was filling what looked to be like large circles, circles that had thick, heavy cubic protrusions. Almost like the teeth on gears. In fact -

He moved to another side of the room again, continuing to shift the long papers, this time with magic because he was becoming impatient in his discovery. Where the fuck were Fogg and Mayakovsky?

It had to be gears, they matched more gears, continuing on and on, on top of one another like a machine. The insides of a clock, or that steampunk shit. Which was really just the insides of clockwork anyway, that’s what it had to be. But what the hell was it making? Was it a machine?

Before he could shout again, something that would not be near as nice as the last two times, Penny blipped out of existence entirely. Without the need to travel at all. 

-

_Fillory_

-

“COME ON!” Margo screamed behind her, nothing but rage and fear in her face. The fucking Tower of Lost Time was collapsing on top of their heads, and Plover was panicking too much to not run into walls. She was NOT going to die buried under a pile of rocks, that was the not the swan song of Margo Hanson.

Plover appeared around the corner of the literal maze inside the tower, the thing was like 2 stories and the length of a school bus how the _fuck_ was there a labyrinth on the first floor? _Fuck magic and fuck Fillory and FUCK PLOVER_ “I’M GOING TO LEAVE YOU HERE IF YOU DON’T HURRY THE SHIT UP!” she screeched behind her, but already she could see the way out crumbling 100 yards ahead. No, no, NO!

“This way!” Plover told her from behind, leading her down another hallway where a hole in the wall had opened up to show sunlight, but the raining dust and brick was already beginning to fill the space. 

Then the beams snapped, the tower groaning like a wounded animal, and the wall beside them caved in entirely. A blood-curdling scream reached Margo’s ears, her heart pounding in her chest like war drums, and for a single devastating moment she thought the scream had been her own. But it had been Plover, pinned beneath the beams and falling rock. She had no time to cast, no time to run, no _where_ to run, and with wide eyes and fear striking her to her core - Margo vanished as the final foundation broke and the whole tower collapsed into a pile of rubble and broken beams. The dust not settling until hours later, and no one around to hear it’s demise.

-

“Would the bones of a former High King be a suitable trade?” Eliot asked the giant spider demon, fingers already itching to levitate back up the well and retrieve whatever was needed. Even if he had to magic the bones out of his leg or something to do so. 

“In what condition would this skeleton be?” asked the bone-eater in it’s raspy half-scream. 

“No-no-no, not a whole skeleton,” Eliot backtracked in panic. “Ribs, vertebrae, a shoulder maybe? Or possibly a foot? They’d be... fresh.” His stomach churned at the thought, not liking the idea of having even more wooden structures inside his body when he was still trying to get used to the ones he already had. But for Q, fuck he really would do anything for Q. Even this.

The spider demon nodded in approval, mumbling to itself, and Eliot felt a buoyant sensation in his chest that had nothing to do with the wooden bones and skin grafts. But before the Bone-collector could confirm what it was that would be equal in trade, Eliot disappeared from the dark chamber in the blink of an eye. 

-

_The Library_

-

Alice looked up right as the clock on her desk matched up with 7:55 ENT (Eastern Neitherland Time), her spell completed earlier that morning and (she hoped) the exact times for all of the instances she was pulling her friends from. 

As soon as she did she saw her office, not a second before empty save herself, full of familiar faces that made her heart flutter in her chest. It hadn’t been that long, but it had _felt_ like a lifetime. She saw them all look around, shock and even horror on a few expressions, before they all started talking at once.

“The fuck Alice?!” Penny exclaimed, not happy to be interrupted in his discovery that had taken a month to find.

“How does this always fucking happen?” Kady muttered loudly to Julia, who was just looking around lost and dazed.

“I can’t be here!” Eliot exclaimed, panicked, eyes wide and manic. “Send me back!”

“He’s dead,” Margo’s strained voice came in lastly, and it sounded so _unlike_ her that it caught everyone’s attention, even Eliot’s in his panic. She was covered in white dust and splintered wood, with a few cuts and scrapes on her face, but her expression was something even she couldn’t control. Existential dread. “He’s dead, and-” she looked up at Alice behind the desk, who was sitting there waiting for them all to quiet enough that she could talk. “You killed him, again.”

“Bambi. What the fuck happened?” Eliot was next to her in an instant, trying to help brush the dust and debris off her hair, wiping it off her face, holding onto her shaking hands. She looked like a ghost. 

“You - you finally killed him, you _bitch_. I was still using him!” her composure snapped, what little she had grasped in her shock. 

“No, you weren’t,” Alice said as placating as she could. “He had nothing else for you. You’re also welcome, by the way. That wasn’t where your book ended, but it was not going to be a pleasant recovery.”

“I had questions I needed answered!” Margo near screamed, still high-strung from her brush with death. Eliot held on to her but not to hold her back, he looked like Alice was also at the top of his shit list.

“You read our books?” Kady snapped. “Making yourself real at home here, aren’t you?”

“I had to, to find out where you all were. Now shut up and listen, we don’t have much time and it’s important,” Alice stood when she said this, fingertips braced on her desk to fortify her. “It’s about Q.”

If she thought some of them were glaring daggers at her before, it had nothing on Margo and Kady’s combined expressions. But both Eliot and Julia seemed struck, Eliot’s furious expression completely melting away. Julia looked - relieved, as if something had finally been confirmed to her, and she smiled at Alice.

“Of course it fucking is,” Kady said unkindly, which Alice knew (from reading her book) had nothing to do with Quentin himself, but with how Julia had been handling his death since it happened. Quentin was very much the little brother Kady had never asked for or wanted, but she would be on board as soon as she knew it wouldn’t lead Julia to more harm. Alice felt a little uncomfortable with being as in-tune with her friend’s inner thoughts and then meeting them so soon after, but it helped explain a _lot_.

Eliot whipped around at Kady’s muttered grievance, and Alice couldn’t imagine the look that must have been there to make Kady’s jaw set so tightly. “You, _shut_ it,” Eliot all but threatened, pointing at her and glaring so harsh it had Margo shifting to step between them. But there was no need. Eliot turned back to Alice with so much restrained hope in his eyes it hurt her heart. “What _about_ Q?” 

She tried to hold it back as best she could, but in the end she couldn’t contain it any longer.

Alice smiled.

-

_The Darkness Beyond the Metro_

-

There’s no way to know how long Quentin fell, or how fast, at times it felt as if he was merely suspended in air. Until at long last the ground approached and mortal fear returned to him like a freight train. Why would someone who was dead be afraid of dying? Was that what Hades had meant when he said his way of perception had stopped the train?

He couldn’t help it, Quentin squeezed his eyes shut as tightly as he could. He knew he had no real body, so it shouldn’t have mattered, but somehow it did. Conceptual paradoxes all around. He did hit the ground, but not at the break-neck speed in which he’d fallen from the metro train. More like he’d just jumped out of a tree and had decided not to brace himself for it. The impact kicked up dust and ash, coating his clothes and the tips of his long hair, making him cough though he had no need to breathe. Quentin stayed on the ground for a good minute, fingers spread and palms braced on the ground to make sure it was actually there, but he had survived the free-fall and now he was - where?

In the slowly settling dust Quentin could see petrified stumps of trees, broken and crumbling walls, and a dead grey ground that matched the dark empty sky. Everything existed in shades of grey and decay, and was silent as the grave. He pushed himself to his feet, and looked around, brushing off the dust as he did so. There wasn’t another soul around. No wind, no echoes, just a vast emptiness that gave off the unsettling feeling of being cold. It was all dead. 

Quentin licked his lips and thought about saying something, just to break up the dreadful silence that once again reminded him that he had no heartbeat to echo in his ears. But it felt too daunting, and his mind spun with possibilities where he was. Was this Hell? Was it the original underworld, before the library’s bureaucracy took over? Most Greek and Roman epics took place in the underworld - and this matched that description better than the hotel lobby he and Julia had encountered before. 

He took a step, the ash shifting and kicked up with each step, and Quentin felt a little weary at what exactly had burned to coat everything in the grey-white layer, like a distorted concept of snow. But standing up and looking around, he realized that he recognized towering structures in the distance. Decrepit and falling apart, but there was no mistaking them. They were skyscrapers, apartment buildings, and just before them he could see a dried up creek bed weaving through the wasteland he stood in. It was large, and might have had paths between the stumps and dead trees, a few bridges crossing the dead stream, and broken statues littered throughout. It took him a few minutes of controlling his breathing and mapping out his surroundings for Quentin to understand where he was.

It was Central Park.

But everything was dead. 

With a hand tugging through his hair, brushing it aside to see better, he tried not to panic because it was also somehow very uncomfortably familiar. Why couldn’t he connect the dots?

“You’re actually doing better than I thought you would,” came a pristine voice behind him, also painfully familiar and a shock in the dense quiet. Quentin spun and there perched atop a broken down wall was a red-headed woman in a black dress with a knowing smirk on her face. “Your mind must still be muddied up from the transition, give it time.”

“Jane Chatwi-,” Quentin cut himself off just as the woman gave him a stern look. “Eliza.” Deja vu never failed. He had seen a younger version of her in his dreams when he first began at Brakebills, just as cryptic and poised. 

“It’s been a long time, Quentin,” Eliza smiled. “I’d say I’m happy to see you, but that doesn’t seem quite appropriate - considering.” She gestured about her, but her glib and teasing tone gave way just how pleased she really was to see him.

“What are you doing here?” he asked, stepping closer and taking her hand to help her off the wall when she reached for him. 

“Why I’m here for you, of course,” Eliza said matter-of-factly. “I passed on a long time ago, but was sent a request to help you guide your way through this place on your _epic quest_.” She continued to smile primly and quietly gleeful, eyes alight with mischief. “Quite an honor. The first god-given epic in thousands of years.”

“So do you know where we are?” Quentin pressed, looking around again.

“Central Park, I believe,” Eliza mocked, but her expression was just as secretive as ever. “As for the rest, I believe you’re supposed to work that out for yourself.” Quentin just stared at her in disbelief. “Oh come of it, you didn’t really think I’d be here to just hand you the answers in a manila envelope, did you? We know how well that went last time.”

“Penny stole it from me,” Quentin defended himself with a scowl. 

“And now you are less careless,” Eliza pointed out. “And you remember what you read and hear very well, just in case Fillory decided to take it away for shits and giggles.” 

“... that was a hint,” Quentin pointed out, to which he got a look from Eliza that read _obviously_. “I heard it before, where did I hear about a land where everything was dead?”

“Stop asking me questions and think, Quentin,” Eliza scolded.

“Asking questions out loud is how I think,” Quentin muttered, and paced a moment. He started back from the fight with the monster, where no one was really doing much talking, and kept going. Honestly the last time he’d had a conversation that wasn’t strategic planning or delegating the many dangerous tasks they had lined up was when he and Josh managed to accidentally make it to the land of the Old Gods. Which was honestly a bit of a blur, but the secretary guy had mentioned something about a pocket world-

“Fuck, are we in the Mirror World?” he murmured, and Eliza huffed impatiently. “No, it was blank and backwards, not dead. The dead place was the other realm, The Seam was in between. _Fuck_.”

Eliza sighed loudly, and finally gave in and blurted out, “the Anti-Verse. He called it the Anti-Verse.”

“Where it’s the exact same as ours but everything is dead,” Quentin remembered now. “Okay, Anti-Verse.” he looked around and figured it fit that description a bit too well. Central Park was the thing of nightmares, like the after effects of a nuclear bomb. “What am I supposed to do here?” He turned back to Eliza, who had her unreadable expression back up. “Do you know my quest?”

“No, you need to find it still,” Eliza explained slowly.

“I- I don’t understand. Can you just stop trying to make this a big secret I need to find out?”

“Where’s the fun in that?” Eliza pouted, but relented. “Fine. Think back to what you remember of the Classic epics. Hercules, Orpheus and Eurydice. They begin their quest because they have a goal in mind, then the actual parameters of the quest are revealed on the way. I have _no idea_ what you’re specifically supposed to do, but I’m here to keep you from - panicking and not doing anything, I guess.” She looked him up and down like his anxiety was about to manifest into an actual octopus or strangler vines that would incapacitate him and leave him useless in the middle of dead-world Central Park. “So, what are you here for? What are you trying to do?”

Quentin would have taken the strangler vines as he tried to calm the storm of questions and overwhelming information in his head from the last few - days, weeks, however long it had been. Boiled down, there was really only one thing he wanted to do more than anything.

“Help my friends,” he muttered quietly, already feeling the regret and guilt creeping up his throat. They might not need his help if he was still _there_ , and that was a complicated mix of emotions and reasons he was not going to look into any time soon. “I don’t know what’s wrong, but they’re in trouble. The world is, according to Hades. They need me for something.”

Eliza nodded. “And how do you plan to do that.”

“I have no fucking idea,” Quentin groaned, pushing his hair back and out of his face in frustration again. Shaking his head as he tried to come up with something mildly plausible. “I guess go find Brakebills? Hope there’s something stupidly magical there that would let me get a message to them, figure it out from there?” He looked searchingly at Eliza, that was all he had to go on. Hopefully the quest would reveal itself there. He really had no idea, and felt so lost with such a daunting and open-ended task laid before him. The fuck had he gotten himself into?

But Eliza was nodding in approval, her small prim smile back on her face. “Sounds like a plan.” She gestured to the half buried path beside them that led through the dead expanse of Central Park. “Shall we?”

“Just like that?”

“Unless you want to stay here, there’s nothing else alive here. No creatures, no souls, it’s rather dreary.” Eliza brushed down her skirt as she glanced about with mild distaste. 

“Yeah, I guess we’re walking then. Let’s go.” Fuck, to _Brakebills_ ? It was in upstate New York. This was going to be a _long_ trip.

“Wonderful,” Eliza exclaimed, walking in step beside him as if it was a regular stroll through the park. Even going so far as to take his arm companionably. “Now, catch me up on everything I’ve missed.”

“Are you fucking kidding?” Quentin blanched at the mere thought.

“What? It’s not like we don’t have time.”

\--


	4. Episode 504

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew, I did it. I wanted to get it up this weekend, and I know I'm in the final hour but I did it so yay. 
> 
> Chapter Notes/TW:  
> \- You know how I always say that Suicide mention/ideation is a part of the chapter. This time, it _is_ the chapter, like more than half of it. I finally get to write out my ideas about everything that went down, it's just not easy for all the characters to hear. So take care of yourselves folks <3  
> \- lots of feelings I guess? This chapter is all about conversations that needed to happen, so it's a LOT of dialogue.  
> \- Again, no beta, I just sped read this (and it took me two hours so idk how speedy I can claim it to be) but any typos, inconsistencies, and other problems are all my own fault.
> 
> Thank you so much for reading, and I hope you enjoy the next installment. <3

\--

Episode 504:

Morpheus Called, He Wants His Mirrored Glasses Back

\--

_The Library_

-

The sound of heels clacking against the floor rhythmically echoed down the corridor before Alice’s voice did, quickly followed by the hurried footsteps of the rest of the group behind her. They’d left her office as soon as she could get out from behind her desk, and were near sprinting across the entire building to get to the mediation rooms. They only had two minutes before their meeting was supposed to begin.

“These mediation rooms exist outside of time, so if we’re late it could feel like an entire day waiting for us to appear,” Alice informed them, talking very fast and turning corners sharply. “It also means you won’t be missing on Earth for very long. Kady and Julia can still make their conference, and Penny won’t keep Dean Fogg and Professor Mayakovsky waiting for too long.”

“What the fuck are you doing with Mayakovsky?” Kady burst out in disbelief.

“And Fogg?” Margo added, one step behind Alice as she effortlessly kept pace without breaking a sweat. “He’s still on my shit list.” 

“Who’s Mayakovsky?” Julia asked, the first time she’d spoken since arriving. 

“He’s a Russian Master Magician that runs Brakebills South,” Alice answered for them, finally reaching the dark corridor that housed a long line of crimson doors. 

“Fogg asked me to come with him to help fix some shit he’d started with Mayakovsky,” Penny droned out, not really looking at them but watching Alice as she took out a ring of keys and began opening one of the doors. “- Who exactly are we meeting with?”

“Yeah, you never said,” Kady pointed out suspiciously, put moved just as quickly as the rest when Alice hurried them all into the startlingly white room that lay within. It had pure white walls, all white leather furniture - a few chairs and lounge couches - and silver light fixtures with a coffee table in the middle. It already had a freshly brewed pot and mugs laid out impeccably like a home living magazine. 

And there, sitting across the room in a crisp black tailored suit, with his fingers steepled over crossed legs, was Penny. Their Penny, from timeline 40. Alice slammed the door shut and hurried to the front of the shocked group.

“I’m so sorry. Did we keep you long?” she asked, breathless from the walk over and managing to come off apologetic at the same time.

“About an hour, maybe more,” Penny mentioned with a quirk of a smile. “It’s hard to tell in here.” His eyes traced over every face silently, betraying no emotion in a way that was very familiar to his former self - but he still appeared out of place. A mirage in the desert. 

“Are you really here, or is this another thing like the truth key bullshit where we can only see you?” Margo asked, one hand on her hip and the other holding out a finger as if to pause the entire room until the matter was clarified.

“No, I’m really here,” Penny looked like he almost laughed, in this subdued form of joy, which was strange and not like the Penny they knew. Margo and Eliot exchanged looks like it was an episode of _Invasion of the Body Snatchers_ , but didn’t get to continue an interrogation because Kady beat them to it.

“How is this possible?” The words came out winded, scattered in pitch.

“This is a mediation room,” Alice chimed in, even as Penny stood up and buttoned the center of his suit jacket like he was about to come over there and prove to them just how solid and real he was. “It’s a place set up outside of the parameters of time and reality, so we can exist in the same room even though we’re from different planes of existence.” She nodded to Penny, a small smile on her face. “You look good.”

“Thanks, considering,” Penny shrugged, his monotone they knew him for coming back. “I don’t exactly age anymore. The suits were a nice upgrade, when I got the promotion. It says Armani on it, but I figured I should ask the experts-” he didn’t even get to look to Margo and Eliot as he said it because Margo crossed the room in three quick strides. She was the first to actually approach Penny of timeline 40 beyond the step inside the door, and she did the most unexpected thing.

She hugged the absolute shit out of him. 

“I realize you almost just died so that might be part of this,” Penny said after a tense beat where he carefully hugged her back, almost as if he didn’t know how to return one anymore. “But thanks. I’ve missed you guys, too.” Eliot approached next, slow precise steps that probably had more to do with his new sense of balance, but he hugged Penny as well. 

“I think this might be the first time I’ve ever hugged you,” Eliot muttered into the shoulder of his suit jacket, but he hugged tightly with all the strength he could muster. He didn’t give out those kinds of hugs to everyone. 

“I just had to die for it to happen,” Penny teased, again a flippant and bittersweet sense of humor had seemed to take over his personality. Border-lining on the macabre. But he did live in The Underworld; they really couldn’t blame him. Alice’s hug was similar in severity, she and Penny had too much history not to, as was Julia’s - even though they didn’t. Kady stayed where she was with her arms crossed and shoulders slightly hunched behind the couch, not trusting the whole situation or that she was standing literally between two versions of Penny. In a room that felt so entirely out of place and other-worldly it was nerve-wracking. The room itself was as void of feeling as the rest of the Library, and it had a lot to do with the meshing of life and death in the same space. An impossible room for impossible meetings.

Penny-23 also stayed by the door, glowering at his counterpart but at least half attempting to hold it back. They were here for information, apparently, because the old Penny always had to have all the answers. He thought about the last time he’d been in this room, and everything that the other man had told him. Specifically what he’d said about Quentin, and what he _hadn’t_ said. _‘Just remember when the time comes, I said ‘do it’. Do what he says.’_ Which hadn’t told him _shit_. He hadn’t been prepared in the slightest for what happened, and everything had tumbled out of control because of it. Yes, things seemed to finally be rightening themselves in very different ways, but he still wasn’t happy about the entire situation.

“I can see you’re still pissed,” Penny-40 told him, sitting back down in the single cushioned chair that faced the rest of the room, and motioned for the others to join him in the circle around the silver coffee table. “I don’t blame you, I was a little mad as well.”

“What are you talking about?” Kady near snapped, but Julia had taken her arm and led her to the soft white leather couch and sat her in the corner so she could huddle against the arm while she gained her bearings. Penny bit back a smile, knowing it wouldn’t help their situation; but he was happy Kady had someone close that actually understood her nuances and moods. 

“I met him here, not a few months ago, for a chat. Don’t you remember? He passed on my message to you.” He tried to keep his words gentle, but that only seemed to make Kady’s scowl deepen.

“This isn’t going to be the same bullshit as last time,” Penny-23 bit out, now getting very vivid flashbacks of the tough love session the dead librarian had given him previously. Basically telling him to get his shit together without telling him how. “You could have told me it was about Quentin, you absolute dick.”

Penny-40 exhaled heavily through his nose, the omniscient smile dropping and revealing that the Penny they all knew and loved was still brooding angrily beneath the surface. “I didn’t have all the details, then. I didn’t know what was about to happen until it already did.”

“You knew he was going to die?” Alice pressed. She sat perched on the edge of the chair cushion, closest to Penny’s right. Eliot had claimed the other chair on the left, and Margo had sat beside Julia and Kady on the couch - but still within reach of Eliot if need be. She had recovered quickly from her near death experience and was very vigilant of everyone in the room. 

“Yes and no,” Penny said with a slight head tilt. “Since someone had stolen their books,” he glanced at Alice with a tight smirk, “the pages were being rewritten. I only knew that it was going to be important. Critical.”

“You said that last time, but you didn’t explain jack shit,” Penny-23 spat. He hadn’t sat down. He stood behind the girls on the couch with his arms crossed and a scowl on his face. “Vague douchebag.”

“I kind of have to be, the Powers-that-be require it. I’m not allowed to give you all the cheat codes.”

“Then why even agree to this meeting,” Margo asked in a demanding tone, back in the game and serious as a heart attack.

Penny just gave another smug smile, more to himself than the group, as if telling himself private jokes. “Seeing what I can get away with. Also, after everything they put you through and what’s about to happen next - I figured I could shed some light on a few things. As best I can.”

“Wait - what’s about to happen?”

Penny grinned outright in a very evil and coy way. “Spoilers. That’s not what we’re here for.”

“We’re here about Q,” Alice pointed out, getting them back on track. Eliot shifted subtley in his seat, hands fidgeting, but remained silent and at rapt attention. “You said you didn’t know what was going to happen, but you somehow knew he’d die.”

“Quentin’s story is never written in stone. It’s been written 40 fucking times, not to count the rewrites. When I got the extra pages I almost didn’t think that they would happen until I saw him face-to-face.”

That got everyone’s attention in a hot second.

“He was here?” Julia asked, bright and wide awake now.

“How long ago?” Eliot demanded, and everyone else asked questions similar in nature.

“Oh yeah, a while ago,” Penny answered flippantly, leaning back in his chair. “Pretty much as soon as I got promoted, and almost as soon as he died. He was expedited.” 

“Do you know why?” Alice asked.

“Well, he wasn’t supposed to be here. Like, at all. Your first theory was right,” he said this to Alice. “Someone plucked him from oblivion and dropped him in the elevator outside my office. He was my first case.”

“Who?” Margo demanded.

“No fucking idea.” He had the small smirk back on his face; this was the most entertainment he’d had in eons. Nostalgia was a force to be reckoned with, and it was nice to actually be able to give answers and not the cryptic bullshit he was used to. He knew he was still giving them a semblance of a run-around, but Penny hoped that would be enough to allow him to reveal more information than he was technically allowed to be giving. He’d probably still get in trouble, but at this point who fucking cared? He was back in the game, and gods be damned he fucking _missed_ it.

“...how did you know he’d be in the elevator? Or did he just wander around until you bumped into him?” Margo continued. That did sound like Quentin, and it drew a few smiles from the room, but Penny just shook his head. 

“I was told to pick him up,” Penny told her. But didn’t elaborate. In fact he got very quiet, the chatty atmosphere dissipating quickly, much to everyone’s surprise. Except for Penny, who just waited. 

“Are you going to say more?” Margo challenged.

“About which part?”

“Okay,” Margo sat forward and clapped her hands against her knees. She was not afraid to go about this the hard way, and ask questions from every angle to get what she wanted. “You were doing so well. But none of the obscure, Morpheus-speak bullshit; which I know you were about to segue into so don’t even try.” She pointed at him menacingly as she said it, and Penny’s smirk widened. “You knew Q was waiting for you, and he was probably a mess because he always is - yet you dealt with it. Or were you just a dick?”

“I’m not allowed to be a dick, not even to Quentin,” Penny drolled out. 

“What even is your job?” Margo half sneered.

“I work in _Secrets Taken to the Grave_ ,” Penny told her, crossing his leg over his knee and steepling his fingers together again. “It’s more human resources than what I was doing before, categorizing stories before shelving, but it still has to do with knowing the ins and outs of everyone’s books and how important they are.”

“And Quentin told you his deepest, darkest secrets,” this came from Kady, who had found her voice and it bled disbelief and contempt. 

“Honestly it was probably easier for him, seeing a familiar face,” Penny pointed out, softer than he meant it to be. “His death was very quick, he was confused and needed a fuck ton of extra guidance. I walked him through a lot of steps and ended up using this deluxe package for souls in the deepest level of denial.”

“Which you somehow knew, on your first case,” Margo pointed out, with equal disbelief. “Orientation must be thorough.”

“You would think,” Penny chuckled, which earned him a hard stare. 

“But you knew what to do, on your first case,” Margo repeated, “your very first client. Did you have a cheat sheet?” She was being snarky, but it was a big loophole. 

“Something like that,” Penny said cryptically, which got him a menacing finger pointed his direction by Margo.

“How?” Alice interjected, looking very confused. “No one has that information unless the god contacted you, and I would have been briefed if the gods actually spoke to us in the last century. Spoilers,” she added to the rest of the group, “they haven’t.” She turned her piercing eyes back to Penny, who was watching her just as smug and patient as before. He _couldn’t_ tell them, he was waiting for them to figure it out. She huffed to herself. Fine. They could work this out. “The only way Librarians know so much is from reading everyone’s books, piecing together different parts from different storylines. But you couldn’t have done that with Quentin’s book. It ended at his death, that’s how all the books end. They don’t extend to what happens in the Underworld.” It just didn’t make any sense. 

“Unless there’s another book.” It was Eliot who spoke up, his sharp but quiet gaze darting around the room as everyone spoke and lobbied information back and forth like badmitten. “I have two volumes. I died once, in a different universe, my second volume could be my second life.” He looked to Alice and then beside him to Margo to see if his idea resonated or sounded plausible. “Maybe Quentin gained another when Alice altered his timeline.”

“No, different volumes in a single person’s story have nothing to do with life and death,” Penny revealed, shooting Eliot’s idea down with little grace or apology. “You have two volumes because you talk so damn much in your head. There’s too much material. Also, your life has a very distinctive shift between the first and second volume. It fit and was more poetic to have it in a _Part I_ and _Part II_. The writing room likes that kind of shit, when it happens.” Eliot deflated into his seat, which hadn’t seemed possible before with how he’d been lounging in it, and Penny just shook his head at his actions. “You were so damn close, though.”

“To what?” Eliot drawled in frustration. 

“The answer.”

“I’m starting to remember why no one liked you first year except Kady.”

“He has to be cryptic,” Alice said snappishly, sending Eliot a warning look that glanced off him like water off a duck. “He can’t actually tell us, we have to figure it out. So _think_. What’s something similar to another volume in a book series?”

“A sequel,” Julia answered, surprising the room except for Kady beside her. “Quentin has a sequel.”

“What does that even mean?” Margo asked, annoyed.

“It means his story continues,” Julia told her, patient as ever and serene in her joy. Because that’s all that could be seen in her face. Quiet, expectant joy. She’d been waiting for this day. She fucking _knew_ it. Quentin wasn’t lost to them forever. “The sequel is the next part in his story, which means it keeps going _after_ his death.” She looked to Penny, a secretive smile of her own curling her lips as she finally recognized that the smugness in Penny’s eyes was because he’d _known,_ too. He knew everything was going to be alright. “That’s why you’re the only one in this room that’s not worried, isn’t it? You knew we’d come, and that everything was going to work out. You knew Q wasn’t gone for good.”

Penny spread his hands, admitting that he was caught. “Perks of the job.”

“You’re serious, you fucking knew?” Penny from 23 said, too surprised to be snappish. “Is that why you told me to do whatever Quentin told me?”

“It was crucial, I told you that,” Penny said seriously. “I wasn’t shitting you. I don’t fuck around with destiny, especially when I can help ease it along without the miles of bullshit we always had to wade through.” Their life was a little overly complicated, in a lot of dumb ways. Margo nodded in agreement before launching an attack from another facet.

“So wait, Q has a second book - and you read it so you know everything already. So what’s with the reach-around, why don’t you just tell us what happens?”

“I don’t know _everything_ ,” Penny exasperated. “I’d only read the first chapter, his book is still being written. This hasn’t happened in millennia, the writing room is a little rusty.”

“What hasn’t happened?”

“Life after death,” Penny replied, his voice now a distinct resonance in the room. “When we die, and are able to actually move on - to wherever our souls were meant to go - it isn’t another life. There’s no continuation of the story. It’s not oblivion, in most cases it’s probably not even nothingness. It’s peace. For most. But the only reason Quentin fucking Coldwater would have a second book in The Library is if his story goes on. Here, in his Afterlife. I don’t know what it is, or where he is, because the first chapter never got me that far. It’s Quentin’s story - and the first chapter is just the two of us, until I handed him his metro card and he finally let go enough to move on.”

“You knew what to say to him,” Alice said, when Penny paused long enough for the words to sink in beneath the skin. “You knew what to say, and what he would say - and do - to get him there. It was all in that chapter.”

Penny smiled a rueful smile, chuckled to himself and looked at his hands. “I almost gave myself away, in the room after I handed him his metrocard. He asked me why I was being so nice to him, or something like that. I answered him before he could finish speaking. I managed to play it off like I knew he’d ask, like a lot of people did or some shit. He didn’t know he was my first client, I took him through the steps so smoothly; was as helpful as I could be.” Penny shook his head as his words trailed off. “He needed it.”

“Where is he? You said he… let go?” Julia asked quietly, her voice much smaller and more uncertain than it had been before.

“I don’t know,” Penny admitted. “When I said he let go, I mean he moved on. The metro card allows souls to pass through an arch way, which leads them to wherever they are meant to go. I can’t see it, they just vanish. We aren’t allowed to know what lays beyond the arch - we all will walk through it, one day.” Penny had shifted his elbows to his knees, leaning far over with his hands still clasped, and his head hung low when he looked down and shook his head a bit. “But I’ll bet you anything he’d not where he’s meant to go in the end.” He looked up and there was that spark of conspiracy back in his eyes. “I think he’s on a quest.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s fucking Quentin.” Many nodded in agreement. “And the only other people that have two books in our Libraries are on quests of their own. They were part of the epics. Odysseus. Hercules. So yeah, it’s been a long time. No one knows the secret formula to make it happen, and I didn’t think it was going to happen to Coldwater. Not with how hard it was to get him there in the first place.”

“What do you mean?” Julia insisted, her own hands clasped and worrying the rings on her fingers as she leaned far over in much the same position as Penny across the room. 

“I had to take him through the motions, like _all_ of the motions. If I hadn’t known ahead of time how fucking difficult he was going to be I probably wouldn’t have been so nice. I mean, ended up having to use the deluxe package - on my _first day_.”

“You didn’t realize he’d be _difficult_ ,” Margo finally interjected, raising an eyebrow but her expression had numbed out. They were talking about Q’s death in more detail than she’d allowed herself to even think to herself since it happened. “You met him, you know. Lived with him.”

“I’m well aware,” Penny drawled back with a half smile flashing his straight white teeth, but it dropped just as fast to something more bittersweet and somber. “No, he wouldn’t let go enough to start accepting his death until he knew everyone was going to be okay. All of you.” He looked around the room, and saw how the words impacted every single one of them. Like a ripple effect. “I took him to his funeral. The one you had, by the fire pit at Brakebills.” Something close to alert panic flitted across their faces, along with a myriad of other emotions as they all remembered that night. The song. What they each threw in the fire.

“How much of it?” Kady asked, her voice hoarse from being quiet for so long. 

“Almost all of it, we left as the song ended. I think the only one still singing was Eliot.” Penny looked to the man in the chair to his left and almost wished he handed. Eliot had been resting his chin against his hand as he leaned on the arm closest to Margo, the hand curled up to cover part of his mouth, and he’d been in that position the entire talk for the most part. But now that hand was in a clenched fist, still pressed hard against his lips and nose like he was trying to keep himself together through sheer force of will. Like he was trying to suppress the scream that wanted to escape so badly. Penny had read Eliot’s books, both volumes, more than he’d read anyone else’s in that room - and he felt for the man as much as he did when he read the passages in those pages. 

“How’d he take it?” Margo asked, to direct attention back to the conversation at hand.

“He cried, a lot,” Penny admitted, making himself tear his stare away from Eliot’s devastated expression. “And like ugly crying, too, I actually felt bad. I knew what to say, exactly what to say, and I think it did help him. But he didn’t want to leave. Not really.” When he chanced a glance at the room, Alice was wiping at her eyes beneath her glasses, and Eliot had closed his completely as tightly as he could. 

“Was that his secret?” Margo pressed, quiet and careful, watching Eliot openly but not reaching out to touch him yet. She knew he needed to hear this. They all did. But she also needed to know all of it, every last detail. When Penny didn’t answer, it caught her attention harshly and she stared at him as he pressed his lips together and contemplated his next words. “Was it?”

“Not… exactly.” For the first time Penny looked a little lost as to how to phrase what came next. At Margo’s penetrating gaze, he finally decided to level with her. She was the only one fully present in the room that was engaging and not being swallowed with grief and regret. “I’m already cheating by telling you all of this, but you’re asking private shit. I don’t want to get in trouble with the powers-that-be, _or_ whoever brought Quentin back in the first place. My money is on Hades, I put 100 years on it in book club.”

“ _Book Club_?” Margo sneered in disbelief. 

“That fucker always loves to make a deal,” Penny pointed out. “But yes, there are groups of Librarians that read books and discuss them like it’s a damn club. I got roped in my first couple weeks. But it’s helped shed light on a _lot_ of shit going on with you guys, so I’m considering it reconescence more than anything.” He ran his hands through his hair as he leaned back and weighed his options, visibly warring with himself in his expression. Before he threw his hands up and said “fuck it” to the room and leaned forward again. 

“Because it’s important,” he told them, pointing at Margo and Alice and even Eliot to make them understand and get their attention again, “to the story that’s about to happen. And I’m really sick of being on the sidelines, knowing absolutely all the shit you all do, and not being able to do shit about it. I hate being stuck as the man behind the curtain. All this could go tits up easy enough, and it deals with all of you. But mostly Eliot’s spell.” Eliot’s eyes focused and sharpened, staring right at Penny as everyone else looked to him.

“What spell?” Kady and Penny-23 asked at the exact same time, making them look at each other then back at El. Who hadn’t moved a muscle in his chair, legs crossed and fist still pressed against his mouth. 

“I think we need to catch up everyone on everything before I keep going,” Penny said, glad to not be the center of attention for a moment and allowing himself to breathe. “Knowing our fucking lives, I’m pretty sure it all connects somehow. So let’s play ‘what I did on my summer vacation’, then I’ll answer your question.” He said the last to Margo, who huffed but nodded in agreement.

-

“Fine,” Margo voiced in the silence that followed, looking at everyone in exasperation, and decided she was going first. 

She began by telling them all about the Fillory they had come across: 300 years in the future, and not run by Children of Earth any more.

“Shit,” Kady muttered. “Fen and Josh?”

“We don’t know,” Margo answered. “I’m looking for them, that’s what I’ve been doing. We sent El to the centaurs to get fixed up, which it looks like they did,” she glanced at Eliot, who finally moved his hand to wave off the segue she opened up. “But before we got there we ran into that witch, the one Q found after we first fought The Beast and he thought we were all hurt.” She looked to Alice, who had actually been there that day. “She still has his blood, she never used it. And she has a spell that would allow us to build a body, so we can bring Q back if we can get ahold of his soul.”

“Holy shit,” Julia exclaimed, laughter breaking through her words and her hands up by her mouth to keep herself under control. Margo was right next to her, after all, and she could probably feel the woman vibrating despite how she tried to control herself.

“Exactly. El just needs to find skin and bone, from within the same year as when the witch took his blood.”

“How the fuck are you doing that-” Kady began but Eliot’s voice broke through, scratched like shattered glass.

“I’m working on it.” 

He didn’t elaborate, and Margo took the silence as her chance to continue. She went on to explain how she had split with him, and her quest to find the Dark King and make him choke on his own teeth. Especially when she found out who it was - Christopher Plover.

“That’s just fucking wrong,” Kady growled out, under the same sentiments that Margo had been with how the universe thought it was somehow fucking okay that Plover lived and ruled Fillory for hundreds of years while Q was _dead_.

Margo took them through the Clock Barrens, the Kind Wolf’s final message and his ideas about what she was supposed to do. “I loved that damn wolf,” Margo said in ending. “Smart fucker, and so nice it hurts. He thinks I need to fix the clocktrees, every single one was tall as a damn electric post, and they were all _broken_. He also sounded like he was suggesting they actually have a purpose beyond Jane Chatwin being fucking bored in her twenties.” Everyone knew about Eliza’s explanation of why she had built them in the first place, to have something scary and interesting to build a villain around. Nothing more, nothing less.

“They’re really not even that scary,” Julia pointed out, having been the one that had the conversation with Jane Chatwin, Q by her side.

“They were freaky as fuck when I walked into the barrens,” Margo told her. “They ticked out of time, it was the most unnerving thing I’ve ever felt.”

“How do you even fix a clock tree?” Alice asked, eyebrows knitted behind her red rimmed glasses.

“Fuck if I know,” Margo threw her hands up. “I’m just doing what I’m told. I’m not a horomancer. It all just looks like steampunk shit.”

“Holy _FUCK_ ,” Penny cursed behind the couch, eyes wide before he turned away from them all and began to pace. “ _Clocktrees_.”

“HA!” Penny-40 barked out, pointing at his counterpart with triumph. “I’m fucking right, aren’t I? It’s all connected.”

“It’s a clocktree,” Penny-23 said to the other Penny, assuming he would understand, and confusing the rest of the group. “How the fuck is it a clocktree? There’s no clocktrees on Earth.”

“Pause, rewind,” Margo demanded. “Start over.”

They went around the room one by one, after that, giving the best summaries they could manage - given the situation - of what had been going on in the months since they’d last seen each other at Quentin’s funeral. 

Penny described his discovery with the Turing Machine and Mayakovsky’s spell equations to change the balance of life and death within magic. That received many shared looks, because wasn’t that what they were dealing with in the first place? Had dealt with, when it came to Alice and Penny-40 in the past, as well as how Quentin had somehow survived the disastrous aftereffects of the Mirror World - with the help of the divine. So it seemed. It was becoming clear that what Mayakovsky was messing with was god-like powers, and not just in the sense of his ego and ambition. He was delving into spells and magics that were reserved for gods and demigods alone. Which was beyond dangerous. 

This led to Alice’s story of her few weeks in charge of The Library. Time moved slower for her there, so she hadn’t had the months and months of work like Penny, Julia, and Kady. But in that time she’d been reforming the aspects of The Library they despised so much, and begun rebuilding what had been destroyed by The Monsters. She explained her theory of what they had found beneath the foundations of the Library, and what she thought they were seeing. Alice was rarely wrong, when she had the research to back it up, but she’d been wrong about Quentin so she was a little skeptical about everything. It just seemed too coincidental that they were dealing with magics that bent the rules of what they knew and threatened to break them entirely, and in some cases shatter the realities they’d come to know. There was no question, from their discussions, that they were dealing with god-level magics that were now becoming readily available to mere mortals. 

Which had a lot to do with the flux of magic running about in the world. It’s what had raised the red flags with the gods, and what Kady was dealing with back on Earth.

She went into the best detail she could without over-explaining the entire situation. She’d been in conference with leaders and Master Magicians from all over the world, creating a network and (as was her hope) a coalition to help control the spread of this magic as well as educate everyone across the globe. Let them work together to discover and create and solve problems. It was threatening to turn South, with a group of various miscellaneous persons that weren’t necessarily in leadership roles to begin with, who were considering the flip side of the arrangement. Global gain, financial conquest, and revenge on old feuds. She had a pair of meetings to go to as soon as they got back: first with her own allies for a strategic plan, and then with the whole conference (including the bad apples) to try and nip it in the bud. Julia was coming along to help; she had been in charge of her High School’s mock United Nations after all. But the flux of power was causing a temptation rift between the conference, and no one was really sure how to control it.

Julia kept her story brief. She didn’t have much to tell them, as not much had happened in a long expanse of time. But she still felt like she’d come far in her spirit journey, and was close to an answer. After her breakthrough the night before, when she’d felt something so decidedly human and real inside her mind that wanted to surge magic through her like an electric current - and that spark had felt so much like Q. Her admission caught everyone’s attention, save for Kady who just shook her head because she couldn’t exactly deny that what Julia felt was fueled by grief any longer. Look where they were now. It was too much of a coincidence, the whole damn thing was. 

“The Universe can’t deal out that many coincidences without it meaning something, right?” Kady asked the room, her hand holding Julia’s as she had laid all her cards on the table, but her dark eyes were trained on Penny-40. He nodded back in agreement, and he didn’t elaborate right away. Too busy piecing together his own facts and ideas. 

“So how does it all connect? With Quentin?” Alice asked, because it was obvious that if everyone’s separate adventures all connected - that Quentin’s death was the catalyst. The epicenter for how everything changed and shook out to where they were now. 

Penny sighed and leaned back in his chair again. “I bet anything that his quest he’s on has something to do with all of you, and yes I bet it connects that way. Which means I was right. His quest will have to take place partially in the Underworld, and the rest on Earth. So Eliot’s spell bringing him back is key to everything - _but,_ there’s a problem.”

“His secret,” Margo filled in, ready for her answer she’d waited the past hour for. Penny nodded again, and ran his hands through his short cropped hair like it was physically paining him to reveal what had been said in his office. He shouldn’t be telling a group of people, who knew and loved Quentin, what was said in the most confidential place in existence - but if he didn’t things were going to get royally fucked up. He just knew it. So with a deep sigh that felt pulled from the depths of his chest, he forced the words forth.

“My job, _Secrets Taken to the Grave_ , doesn’t mean what you’re thinking,” he began. “It’s not the deepest, darkest secrets you’ve kept from the people in your life, or the skeletons in your closet. It’s secrets kept from your book.” Even Alice looked confused at that. “Everyone’s books consist of three factors: your actions, your words, and your thoughts. All of it, recorded and written like a novel in a style that best fits the outcome of your life. So - how exactly do you think something could _possibly_ be left out of your book if it has all of your thoughts, and every action or word you spoke?” No one answered him, because it sounded impossible.

“ _Secrets Taken to the Grave_ means the secrets you’ve never admitted to. In your book there’s nothing to hide, except what you’d kept hidden from yourself. The missing pieces to your life, that complete your story, which can really only be asked in death. Once we know them, we make the edits to the book, and shelf it in The Library. Nothing left out.”

It made sense, in a way. There wasn’t much you could actually keep from yourself that even the Library wouldn’t know about, but damnit if they weren’t thorough. 

“So what was Q’s?” Julia asked this, quiet again and sounding a little wary. It was very personal, knowing the inner most secrets of a persons life; and she wasn’t the only one that felt uncomfortable that they were talking about it without Q even there. Penny couldn’t help giving her a sympathetic look, because she was probably the one person in that room that knew. Had always known, ever since it happened. 

“The one thing none of you admit to, and won’t talk about,” Penny said as kindly as he could, but it still came out harsh enough to make more than one person flinch. 

The silence was thick enough to choke on.

“I know it’s hard, but you can’t ignore it anymore. Quentin wasn’t allowed to, so neither are you.”

“How is that a secret?” Alice bit out, sudden, quiet and angry. She had been there, she had watched Quentin hesitate - when he could have ran. She had gone through a million scenarios in her mind where they still could have won, and Quentin could have lived. He didn’t have to die. “He made his choice.” She didn’t realize she’d said it out loud until she looked up and saw how everyone was staring at her. She pressed her lips together tight and felt the full brunt of Margo’s glare, Julia’s hurt and disbelief, and Eliot’s pure unadulterated anguish at her words. She turned to Penny in his suit and careful expression and tried to control her tone as she spoke between gritted teeth, “you can’t tell me he didn’t know what he was doing.”

“Of course he did, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t need to be spoken aloud,” Penny told her. “The secrets aren’t _just_ for The Library, even though that’s how it started. The secrets need to be revealed to the person who owns them, so they can process enough to move on. Quentin - he needed to hear it. He needed to hear himself say it, even as a question.”

“He wasn’t sure?” Julia asked quietly.

Penny sighed through his nose and tried again to make this conversation as delicate as he could. “He was, but you know Coldwater. He over-thinks what to have for breakfast. You really think his death would be any different?”

“What did he say _exactly_ ,” Margo asked, tired of Penny’s attempts to be kind when he kind of sucked at it. In her opinion. She just wanted to know what happened, not be led there by the hand with her eyes averted. 

Penny looked like he swallowed a lemon, and it took him a full beat to even be able to speak. “He asked, ‘Did I do something brave to save my friends, or did I finally kill myself?’”

The effect was immediate, silent and like a nuclear bomb all at once. Alice looked at her hands, perched in her lap and clutched so tight that they left half-moon circles in her palms. The girls on the couch were also silent, Kady holding Julia’s hand tight, and Julia reaching out to grasp Margo’s as well. Penny-23 just turned from his pacing and let the words sink in with all the other facts he knew. What he’d seen, what he’d discussed with Fogg, all of it. It wasn’t a surprise to any of them, but it was more impactful than they expected. To hear Quentin’s words themselves, how even in death he had to question it. 

Eliot unfolded himself, graceful in appearance but he couldn’t feel it, he couldn’t feel his fingertips or his limbs as he moved as if to get up from the chair - but he couldn’t stand. Instead he clasped his hands in front of him. Fingers intertwined, pressed to his mouth and nose to feel his breath, elbows on knees and trying to make sure he was indeed still breathing - that his heart was still hammering in his chest - because it felt like his whole body had gone numb. He knew, he _knew_ without anyone having to fucking tip-toe around it. Days after meeting Quentin they’d talked about his condition, his hospitalizations, and the unspoken things that Eliot had guessed as he smoked a cigarette on the patio and watched Q unravel in his panic and worry. He had known all along, and yes maybe it was finally time to actually look it in the face for what it was. But why the _fuck_ did it matter that they talked about it _now_? What importance could it possibly have to what he was trying to do? 

He just wanted Quentin back.

“What did you tell him?” Margo pressed, shattering the silence and bringing reaction back into everyone’s tense stances. Her words weren’t even spoken loud, but they reverberated through each person like a sonic boom.

“I didn’t answer him,” Penny admitted. “It’s not my place, and it wasn’t a question that really needed answering. He knew, even as he asked it.” At the expectant looks from the girls on the couch, he shook his head minutely and answered, “it was both.”

“But we didn’t need saving,” Alice near whispered.

“It doesn’t matter,” Penny-23 said from the back of the room. “I - talked a lot with Dean Fogg about it. Quentin’s always been, you know.”

“Suicidal,” Kady finally said it, and Julia rubber her hand with her thumb as she looked down and mulled over everything bouncing around in her head. 

“Yeah, and - to someone like that, dying to save your friends is kind of a win-win. It doesn’t have to be suicide, because you were doing something good. Something that mattered.”

“ _He_ mattered,” Eliot hissed.

“He mattered to all of us,” Margo placated, finally reaching out and putting a hand on Eliot’s arm, but he didn’t even flinch at the contact. P-23 might still be on her shit list, but she knew what he was getting at. Q wouldn’t think of it as killing himself if he died a hero. Of all the time she knew him, it was always an acceptable way to go in his mind. He didn’t want to die, but he didn’t actively mind it either - if that’s how he went. 

“He tried before, a couple times,” Julia murmured, only heard by everyone in the room because it was so quiet. “Or thought about it at least, he tried to hide it but - I knew.” She tried not to think about all the signs she hadn’t been able to stop obsessing over ever since Quentin died. His downward spiral during the months under The Monster’s thumb, and how towards the end he hadn’t even cared. He’d been fractured, and was so tired. So done with everything. It wasn’t hard to see that once the opportunity happened - his split-reaction would be to just… let go. Be done. It hurt her heart to even think it in that moment, but she had admitted it many times over back at Brakebills as well. It hadn’t gotten easier with time. 

Penny licked his lips and gauged the devastation left by him forcing their hand. None of them had really looked into the details of Quentin’s death, except for Julia and Eliot, but it had to be done. This wasn’t the end of the discussion. “So, how this answers Margo’s question.” It centered everyone, at least a little bit, so he barreled forward. “It creates a problem, that Quentin died because he wanted to. Eliot can bake up a new body to put him in, summon his soul, bring it to Fillory; the whole nine yards. But the spell won’t work if Quentin doesn’t want to live.” He finally had everyone’s attention again, eyes trained on him, even Alice and Eliot’s. “He can’t lie to himself and trick the spell into letting his soul stay in the new body. Fillorian magic doesn’t work like that.”

“Does any magic?” Margo pressed, aiming for a loophole.

“No, I guess not,” Penny backtracked, rubbing his hands together and piecing his thoughts back into place at the same time. “Quentin has spent his whole life with this fucked up disease in his brain, he’s _clinically_ depressed - he can’t just push it aside, and it gave him a thousand reasons to want to die. To bring him back, you need to help him find a reason to live.”

Everyone stared at him, hard. 

“How the fuck do we do that?” Kady asked.

“Talk to him, before you summon his soul. However you’re doing that,” he said the last bit to Eliot, who he wasn’t sure had blinked in the past ten minutes.

“But you don’t know where he is, how do we talk to him?” Margo said, frustration rising to the surface now that it was becoming apparent that all the information Penny had for them was pretty much on the table. 

“I don’t know,” Penny told them, hopeless but still deadpan. “I wasn’t the genius in the group, I figured you guys could work it out. You know he’s dead, and somewhere in the astral plane doing shit. There has to be a way to locate him, a way to set up communication for a couple minutes. Then one of you, because I’m guessing it’ll be a two-way mirror thing, will have to talk him into coming back.”

“You really think it’ll be that hard?” Margo pressed.

“Is anything in our life ever easy?” Penny pointed out.

“Fine,” Margo acquiesced,finally  leaning back against the arm of the couch. “So who do we send that can get through to him? Alice?”

“Or Julia,” Alice added, still quiet but not as disclosed as she had been. “She’s known him the longest.” Julia nodded, but didn’t look like she necessarily agreed. 

“Do you know who we should send?” Kady asked, staring right at the dead Librarian. “You’ve had all the answers so far, and have the best impartial insight to our lives. As creepy and violating as that is.” She gave him a look that drew a smile to his lips. “You’ve seen this all from above. Who has the best chance?” 

Who could convince Quentin he had something to live for that outweighed all he felt he had to die for?

Penny was silent for a moment, serious as he’d been the whole time, and for the first time impressed. Of course it was Kady who knew how to use his vantage point in their favor. He leaned forward again, forearms against his knees, working the rings on his fingers as he contemplated. But he didn’t need to, not really. He knew the answer. He was just making sure his bias wasn’t playing into what he saw so plainly in front of him.

“I don’t know for certain, but I know who I’d put my money on,” he said with heavy intent, and turned to stare directly into Eliot’s unblinking eyes.

And somehow, they all knew he wasn’t wrong.

“I agree,” Alice answered first. Followed by Julia and Kady. Margo’s protectiveness flared and reared its ugly head, but she pressed her lips tight together and nodded, touching Eliot’s shoulder this time and getting the man to finally move. Blink, turn back to look at her, and see everyone watching him expectantly. Waiting for an answer.

Him - talk to Quentin, before he was even brought back.

Wasn’t this what he wanted? 

Fuck, yes. 

All he wanted was to talk to Quentin, just one more time. To apologize. To tell him everything he’d wanted to say from the moment he’d woken up in the infirmary at Brakebills. To do everything he could for the man that deserved it most - and this was his chance. He didn’t expect anything from Q; he knew how much he’d blown his chance, how sliver-thin their friendship had been the last time they’d spoken face to face. He just wanted to begin to make it up to him. This was just want he had dreamed about, agonized over, for _weeks_.

So why did it feel like his heart had jumped up to his throat and was slowly strangling him.

He nodded to Margo, to everyone. Short, precise, once. Then rested his chin and mouth against his folded hands again and awaited Penny’s next segue in the conversation. He’d do it. Of course he’d fucking do it, he’d been ready to cut off a damn foot not an hour ago. He’d do whatever he could.

He had to.

For Q.

Voices rose and fell around him as they discussed the parameters of _how_ exactly they’d talk to Q, which was a big open-ended mess that probably dealt with some heavy level magic and another stupidly dangerous situation. 

“Our best bet for connection would be through a mirror,” Alice said, her voice penetrating the fog that had surrounded Eliot’s head. “Mirrors are a threshold between our world and the land of the dead, it’s always been used in spells and seances. Real ones, anyway.”

“It’s also why mirrors are covered between death and cremation, to keep the soul from communicating,” Julia added, her stock-pile of internet information flooding to the front of her mind. From back when she had been scouring the outside world for any traces of magic, before Marina and hedgewitches had found her. 

“Fuck, you don’t think we have to use the Mirror World again, do you?” Penny-23 groaned, not liking the resigned look his idea received. 

“We can’t rule it out,” Alice said. “Especially with our long list of coincidences. It’d just be one more.”

“So you need me to stick around,” he pointed out, drone-like in his misery. He hadn’t been looking forward to cutting himself repeatedly any time soon. 

“We’ll at least need you on call, you can still go back to Fogg and Mayakovsky for a while.”

“Yeah, have fun with that,” Penny-40 said with a knowing smirk, making the other Penny glare his direction. 

“You got something to say?”

“Not a word.”

“Dickwads,” Margo interrupted, silencing them both. “Focus.”

“When we get back I’ll pull resources to look through,” Alice continued like nothing had happened. “I’m sure we’ll find something in The Library - but if it is in the Mirror World, I’m sorry but I won’t go with you.” She said this to Eliot, and genuinely looked it. “I can’t, not yet.” He nodded, and understood. She couldn’t go back and listen to Quentin say he didn’t want to live, not so soon after he had made her witness it first-hand. He didn’t blame her one bit.

“I’ll go with you,” Julia said in her stead. “When the time comes.” Eliot nodded his thanks to her, knowing he needed to shake off this sensation that had covered his skin like film. He was going to have to step the fuck up and take charge here, since he’d been appointed the leader in the Coldwater Rescue Mission (™). 

“23, El, and Julia. That’s a good enough away team for me,” Margo said in closing. “Sounds like we got a plan.” And with that she stood up, causing everyone else to do the same. Everything was just as awkward as it had began, but a round of hugs still happened for Penny-40. They didn’t know when, or if, they would ever see him again - before their deaths, that was. Kady held back, again, until her silent exchange of stares with Penny made them come to an understanding. There was really too much going on, too much about to happen and at stake, for them to wallow in any negativities. She hugged him so tight her bones popped in her shoulders.

“Listen,” he said to the group before they went out the door, “if you need any help on my end, in The Underworld or ferrying souls,” he looked directly at Eliot as he said it, “just reach out. I can open a door, or six.”

“Won’t that get you in trouble?” Eliot asked, quiet from not speaking for so long.

Penny just smiled bright and mischievous. “What’s the point of being this high on the ladder if I can’t help when it matters?” 

He was tired of playing by the rules. It was way past time to start going off script, and he knew everyone else agreed. Whatever game the gods were playing, Penny knew he and he friends were going to win this time.

It was about damn time someone did.

-

_The Anti-Verse, Upstate New York_

-

“So let me get this straight,” Eliza began, as she climbed down a particularly steep hill patterned in patches of dead grass. She was using the brittle branches of the skeletal trees still rooted there to balance herself quite well, and none of them broke under her gentle grip - allowing her to glide down the decline effortlessly. 

Quentin had broken every. Single. One. They had disintegrated beneath his fingertips, and if he _could_ have bled he was sure he would have had scrapes all over his face and arms like a horror movie extra. 

“After months of trying to keep this unspeakable evil from wrecking havoc on the Earth or Fillory, which ended up being an immortal child with socopathic tendencies that _you_ were handling pretty well - considering, it and it’s sister were defeated after three hours and a small murder spree in The Library? Doesn’t that sound too _easy_?”

“In retrospect, probably,” Quentin managed, slipping on a foothold that gave way to crumbling ash and only staying upright by sheer luck and fumbling reflexes. He was now hugging a dead tree trunk and trying to get his feet back under him. “But it all felt like a lot more, when it happened. We crammed a lot into a few hours. We blitzkrieged them.” Eliza just hummed noncommittally, finally reaching the level base, and busied herself with brushing off miniscule amounts of ash that clung to her black dress. Quentin was coated, and he tried to not think about how _bad_ he was at questing even after all this time. He was on an adventure with _Jane Chatwin_ , after all - no one could really compare.

“Also, I don’t think The Library thing was minor. Just short. There was no one there to help us, and the Librarians are Master Magicians. Either they were that scared, which requires emotions in the first place,” he bit out bitterly, “or that many had already died. Knowing the Monster, my money would be on the latter.”

“And the sister was worse?”

“Somehow. My Monster at least tried to understand humans, our world. It wanted friends.” He wasn’t sure when exactly he’d gained any kind of sympathy for the creature that had kept him as a pet for months while holding Eliot’s body hostage. But, somehow, it had wormed its way inside. It had been confused and angry, and powerful. Quentin could understand that. So could Eliza, who watched him with knowing eyes.

“Do you think the fact it looked like your friend is how it got to you, in the end?” she asked.

“No, it didn’t get to me,” he denied, and the lie felt heavy on his tongue. “I - I just wanted Eliot back,” he near whispered the last part. In the end, he’d saved Eliot - but he’d never gotten to speak to him. He never really got Eliot back at all.

“But you still feel bad it had to die.”

“I’m human, sue me.” 

Eliza smiled at him, tucking a stray curl behind her ear. “You are indeed. A miraculous thing that shouldn’t be taken for granted.” There was a depth to her words, but she cleared her throat and glanced around at their surroundings instead of elaborating further. Quentin let it drop as well, brushing himself off as soon as his feet were back on horizontal ground. An entire cloud of ash and dust bloomed behind him as he did. He probably looked like Pig-Pen from _The Peanuts_ cartoons.

“I’m fairly certain we’re getting close,” Eliza went on as she surveyed the dead forest that encompassed them. “It’s been a long time since I approached the grounds on foot.”

“Alice did it, once,” Quentin said absent-mindedly. “For the entrance exam.”

“She is quite remarkable,” Eliza added, just as distracted as she peered between the trees. “I think the river is just over the next ridge, that way.” She pointed in a direction that had a drop off, hard to see with how everything remained in shades of grey and muted darkness. Quentin nodded, shaking off memories of nights on the river in this absurdly enchanted rowboat Eliot and Margo kept stashed on the shore. He wondered if it was still there, in this dead version of the world. 

The two made their way further North, speculating directions and ways that this dead world worked in parallel to their own. Would the wards still be up in the Anti-Verse? Or would they even affect them, since they weren’t _really_ there, and their ‘bodies’ were superficial at best? That led to tangents of how ash and dirt could cling to their clothes, or why Quentin was still clumsy as fuck. Why he felt the need to huff for breath up a steep hill, but he still couldn’t hear his heartbeat in his ears. The Anti-Verse was a place that made no sense, that seemed to exist for mere appearances; like perhaps it only had to exist for balance. Like a counterweight that kept their living world from toppling over and blinking into oblivion. 

Or off the edge of the turtle shell, which Eliza laughed at when Quentin brought it up. If it really was turtles all the way down, then the Anti-Verse was probably inside the shell. They were in the safest and most empty place in existence. 

Quentin was really glad he wasn’t navigating this place all on his own. 

Eliza brought a brand new energy to his - Afterlife, he supposed he should call it. He was worried about his friends, worried about what Penny _hadn’t_ told him when he had asked if they’d be okay. Which was now a valid fucking thing, according to Hades. And now, he was in a literal world entirely made of dead things, and it would be the most macabre and disheartening experience of his life if not for Eliza. Who could find humor in a funeral service, even back when she was alive and kicking. Whoever was laying out this roadmap of madness Quentin was on, because there had to be someone divine pulling all these strings, they made a good fucking choice picking Eliza as Quentin’s quest companion. 

“I know this place,” Eliza said suddenly, interrupting their banter and speculation of the universe as they walked into a clearing of dead trees that were tall and had once been evergreens. They were certainly no longer green, which Quentin found mildly amusing - proving Eliza was rubbing off on him. “The wards begin about a quarter miler from here.” She looked to Quentin with mischief sparking in her eyes. “Moment of truth, any bets on if the wards still work?” 

“We don’t have anything to bet with.”

“Oh, I’m sure I’ll think so something. Winner’s choice?” She grinned wolfishly.

“That sounds ominous,” Quentin couldn’t help the small nervous smile. What did he exactly have to fear here? It wasn’t like she could get him killed.

Har-har.

She rolled her eyes at him, “Spoil-sport. Come on.” 

They approached the line of trees that had very obvious ambionses coming off them in waves, thread thin outlines intricately hovering in midair that showed the depth and complexity of the wards. Physically seeing them was something neither Eliza nor Quentin had ever experienced, causing them to stop just short of the spiderweb of spells and curses woven together. Even Eliza looked skeptical at crossing the boundary for a moment, before she stepped forward and phased right through the wards. She turned back to Quentin, shrugged and nodded for him to follow her, and her face wasn’t melting off or anything else equally horrifying so Quentin blew out an unneeded breath and stepped into the web.

It continued for about ten feet, a dense conglomerate of alternating spell lines and formation maps that weren’t disturbed by their path. But Quentin felt every single one, like an ice cold and searing hot metal wire that sliced right through him. It was insanely off-putting. 

But they made it to the other side, and Brakebills materialized in front of them. Or what was left of it, disintegrated and decrepit as the Anti-Verse allowed it to be. Quentin knew for a fact that the buildings were enchanted to be kept clean, so as to save money on janitorial staff, so the juxtaposition was almost comical. A few of the towers were crumbled to the point they shouldn’t have still been suspended in air, the crisp white brick and mortar was charred black as if a bomb had gone off, but everything was mostly intact. The fountains were dry, the grass was dead, the trees were bare and rotting; but it was still all there. 

“Where to?” Eliza asked, hands clasped in front of her primly; like she could have been holding a clutch purse or her jacket. She had her head ticked to the side in question, as if she genuinely didn’t know where they would be going. 

How could she not know?

Quentin led them all the way across campus and through the now sparsely populated wooded area, through the training grounds where his friends had held his memorial fire, and on through another copse of dead trees to the Physical Kids Cottage. It had held up a little better than the University, only missing a few patches of shingles, the same scorched and weather-beaten exterior to the walls, and the paint was chipping in too many places to count. The wood was bleached and broken on all the patio chairs and tables, the brick patio itself crumbling, and the grill was a rusted mess of a heap that would have gave Eliot a heart attack. But it still looked like home, and just the sight of the cottage had Quentin’s chest aching. Right where his heart should have been beating. It’s absence echoed painfully in that moment he stood staring at the wreck before him. 

Then they heard the clinking of bar glasses. 

Eliza and Quentin turned to stare at each other at the same time. They practically ran for the doorway. Quentin was through the door before Eliza, chivalry momentarily forgotten as his ears rang with the familiar chime of bottles being sifted through, liquor poured into a cocktail shaker, and for a moment - one single heart-wrenching moment - Quentin expected to see Eliot standing behind his prohibition era bar mixing martinis for whoever decided to visit that afternoon. His non-existent heart had leapt to his throat, choking him of the air he didn’t need to breathe, as he slid to a stop on the hardwood floor and saw that there _was_ someone behind the counter. Tall, brunette, and looking up in shock only to break out into a wide smile. 

But it was not Eliot.

“Holy shit, you actually made it!” the familiar face beamed at them, balancing three shot glasses between long fingers and rushing to greet them. “It’s been so fucking long since I’ve seen anyone _fun_ , even you.” he added bluntly to Quentin as he practically poured the shot glass into his hands. Quentin, for the life of him (ha), could not believe his eyes - and he knew his mouth was agape in literal shock.

“Bacchus!?”

-

_The Library_

-

Everyone returned to Alice’s office before splitting up, for the time being. Alice had stepped aside to speak with her intern/secretary, Crissy, and sent the pixie-like woman off with a long list of references and documents to search for. 

“She should be back within the hour,” Alice said as she re-entered her office and saw everyone sitting or lounging around. Drained after the long discussion in the mediation room. “I know a few of you have to get back.” Kady turned and began looking through the book shelves instead of answering, Julia watching her questionably. 

“Yeah, I gotta get back to Brakebills South. Make sure Fogg and Mayakovsky haven’t killed each other yet,” Penny said with pusedo-dread in his tone. He also had to tell them about the shapes in the negative spaces of the equation, and how they might be a clocktree. 

“I’m going to go with you, for a minute,” Margo said suddenly, startling Eliot beside her. “Maybe a day, I want to check out this clocktree you found. It might help me later.” She glanced at Eliot after she said it, and knew he was about to object to them splitting up again. It hadn’t gone well last time. “I’m only going for a day, that’s like an hour here. You won’t even miss me.” Eliot only looked half convinced, but Margo kissed his cheek and he nodded numbly as she went over and gestured to Penny. “Come on, 23. _Andale._ ”

Alice assured him that she could get the others back without him, and not a moment later Margo and Penny pinged out of the office arm in arm, leaving Eliot staring where Margo had been moments before.

“Hey,” Julia said quietly to Kady while everything was going on. “You okay?”

“Sure, fine. Why wouldn’t I be?” Kady answered, looking for all the world like she couldn’t care less about anything. “Just focusing on the meetings.”

“We’ll do fine, and you can fill me in when we walk up to the castle,” Julia assured her with a smile. “I’m pretty sure we won’t be late, we haven’t actually been here too long.” Kady was staring hard at her, and Julia trailed off at Kady’s intense silence. “What? I’m still going, right?”

“Are you?” 

“Of course I am,” Julia said in defense, finally realizing why Kady was so upset. “Like Margo said, a day on Earth is like an hour here. We don’t know when they will finally figure out how to reach Q. I can go with Eliot and Penny after we figure out everything in India.” She said it all calm and quiet, rubbing the crook on Kady’s arm where she had them crossed across her chest. Her stance was already relaxing, and Julia tried not to smile at Kady’s split over-reaction. The woman had the most common sense and street smarts out of anyone in that room, was intuitive to a tee, but when she got something wrong stuck in her head it stayed stubbornly. To Julia, who had encountered it many times over, it was as endearing as could be.

“What about your studies?” Kady insisted, still keeping her voice down.

“They’ll still be there when I get back,” Julia smiled, but it dropped a little at Kady’s troubled look. “Will you?”

Kady looked up at her with dark eyes and a sincere expression that answered her question fully, before she brushed it off with a quip. “Just don’t take too long.” She unfolded her arms to hold Julia’s hand that was rubbing her arm, squeezing it reassuringly without drawing up too much attention, then took Julia’s hand fully and led her across the room to Eliot and Alice. “We’re ready when you are.”

Alice smiled subtle and small, and nodded. “I’ll send for you when we find what we’re looking for.”

“I can ask around down there, too,” Kady added, a quick glance to her left catching Julia’s grateful smile. “We have the best minds in the Eastern hemisphere in one spot, someone might know something.”

“Thank you,” Eliot said, nodding at them and his expression finally beginning to lessen in severity. Julia reached out and squeezed his hand with her free one.

“We’ll find him.”

Eliot did his best to smile at her, and then Alice sent them on their way back to the jungles of India. 

-

It didn’t take Crissy even half an hour to return with a library cart full of books, scrolls, files and documents for them to go through about contacting the realm of the dead. Alice had cleared off her desk to make space for Eliot to take up the opposite side, much like how they used to study at the dining room table in the Physical Kids Cottage, although in those days Eliot hadn’t been doing much studying on his part. Magic theory and practice had always come naturally to him, and he also possessed a kind of photographic memory, allowing him to merely cram before big finals and fake his way through high marks for most of his Brakebills career. If he hadn’t been wed to an (undoubtedly incredible and kind) knife-maker’s daughter in Fillory and forced to remain there during his third and final year, he probably would have had to make actual effort to graduate. But there, in Alice’s office, he had already skimmed through almost as many books as Alice had with her speed-reading spell, and they had began a system where he mentioned things that might be useful and she categorized them on her laptop. Crissy was already out looking for more material, and they were half-way through the cart when Eliot’s mind began to wander. As it usually did during study sessions. 

It just took him a moment to gather the courage - or possibly impatience, maybe needling curiosity - to say something.

“Why did you agree I should be the one?” Eliot finally asked, his thoughts a tornado in his head. There were - god, probably at least a dozen - better reasons for Alice to be the person who reaches out to Quentin and talks to him. To help guide him towards whatever reason he may find to live. Eliot didn’t have a right out answer, and probably wouldn’t know it when they found it anyway. There were too many ways he could fuck it up. Plus, he knew that Quentin and Alice had begun to mend a lot of things before he died. Way past their friendship and trust. Honestly, good for them - if it’s what made them happy. If it ended up making Quentin happy. He deserved it more than anyone. 

Alice looked confused at the sudden question, but could see the array of theories in Eliot’s ponderous expression. She put down her book she’d been leafing through, and answered as sincerely as she could. “Because he’ll listen to you.”

“He also listens to you,” Eliot pointed out. She was a certified genius, they all listened to Alice.

“Yes, he listens to me. But he _respects_ what you say. He’ll actually hear you,” Alice pressed. Eliot didn’t look the least bit convinced. Sighing, Alice began again more slowly, “You don’t - did no one tell you about what happened when you were possessed?” Eliot didn’t answer out loud, but his steady expression was enough for Alice. “Eliot, you don’t understand how - _hard_ Quentin fought for you. To keep you safe, while that thing was in control. What he had to do to keep it happy, and unaware of what we were trying to do. I saw him snap at Penny more than once at ideas that would get rid of it, because the idea wouldn’t save _you_ in the process. You were all that mattered.”

Eliot flipped a pen through his fingers, to keep his hand busy as he processed what Alice said. “That doesn’t mean I’m the right person to talk to him. Not with how we ended things.”

“What do you mean?” Alice asked. “I saw you two, at the park - I was there,” she clarified at Eliot’s questioning look. He hadn’t noticed at the time. He’d only been in control of his body for 30 seconds at best, and when he’d seen Quentin - well, he hadn’t seen anything else. He hadn’t even known they were in a park. “I didn’t know what peaches and plums meant, but it was enough to convince him without a shadow of a doubt that you were alive in there. He wouldn’t budge on it.”

“That was 30 seconds of desperation from me, hoping that he’d fucking understand after-” Eliot bit off his words, and stared across the office into nothing. 

“After - what?” Alice asked slowly. But if she’d read his books, Eliot knew she knew. He gave her a stare out of the corner of his eye that said as much, and she looked away a little ashamed. She hated that she knew all the dark corners and secrets of her friends’ lives - the parts that should only have been shared with her in confidence _by_ them, on their own terms. But now that she knew, she couldn’t help but feel terrible about it all. She remembered what he’d said in the park, “ _fifty years”_ , and fuck - her and Quentin had barely been her and Quentin for 50 days. Even when they tried to piece it back together, they both knew it wasn’t going to work. They were wonderful as friends, and terrible as lovers. That’s just the way it was.

“After the last time we talked,” Eliot finally made himself speak. “In Blackspire.” Alice blinked, and tried to recall that day - she spent a lot of time trying to block it out. It was the day she regretted more than any other in her life. “We argued, after I shot The Monster. I let it out. It was me.”

“No, that day was my fault,” Alice persisted, but Eliot went on.

“That’s not even the real issue. He has - _every right_ to be furious with me. To hate me. Too much happened in those weeks leading up to it, and then at Blackspire I -” Eliot swallowed hard, and looked Alice in the eye. “I took his decision out of his hands. He had decided to sacrifice himself, and I decided that he didn’t get to do that. I ruined his plan, his self-sacrifice, and it all fell apart because of that.” Eliot shifted so his head rested on his hand, and he looked back at the far spot on the wall shrouded in darkness. “How did we not know?”

“We knew,” Alice said, and she knew Eliot agreed. “We just - didn’t expect it to actually happen. Not to him.” All of Quentin’s friends knew the depth of his depression, and the reality of how dangerous it could get when he fell too far into it, how important it was to be there for him. But Quentin actually committing suicide? Quentin dead. That was so far out of the realm of possibility no one had been ready. “For what it’s worth,” she added, “I betrayed all of you to The Library, and Quentin still forgave me.” _Enough to try again_. She left that part out, but it was as if the words stayed suspended between them anyway.

“I’m sure you had a lot of penance leading up to that,” Eliot said in a gravely tone that flirted with his flippant air he was known for.

“You have no idea,” Alice murmured, and with a beat of silence the two shared strained smiles. Strained, but real.

“I know I have a lot to atone for,” Eliot muttered, twirling the pen in the air around his fingers, his telekinetic abilities leaking out of him as he tried to keep his emotions in check. It was like a trade, a balance in his body, and he’d learned to master it a long time ago. “But I still don’t think I can do that in the few minutes I talk to Q for the first time in months. Not enough to help him.”

“I think you’re wrong,” Alice said softly, watching Eliot’s magical ministrations and masking how impressed she was. Yes, telekinetics were more magically adept than other Magicians physically, but Eliot had a lot of control of his abilities. More than he probably gave himself credit for. She wondered what else he might be capable of, once he actually tried instead of coasting. “And I think Quentin has already forgiven you, in a way. You still have to show him how wrong you were,” she didn’t mention what part of their lives she meant, but she hoped by Eliot’s careful look that he knew she didn’t mean Blackspire, “and really show him, but I don’t think it’s as hopeless as you’re thinking it is.” Alice swallowed and licked her dry lips, feeling something squirming uncomfortably in her gut at giving out this kind of advice, but she knew it needed to be said. Boys were dumb.

“How can you say that?” Eliot out right asked. “Weren’t you and Q-”

“Look, I’m not here to give you a - green light or anything. That’s not my place, and honestly I have too much on my plate to be your supporting character in your romantic drama/noir,” Alice said bluntly. Eliot’s shock was palpable, and Alice did her best not to react to it. “All I’m saying is - I get it.” She raised her eyebrows to see if they understood each other, and Eliot nodded minutely. “I get it. But we always seem to focus on this relationship shit when situations are most dire - living in the moment before we could possibly die, regrets and all that - when we should be focusing on what’s important. There will be a time for all of that, after. Once we’re safe and can actually think things through. So we don’t say or do things we don’t mean.” She looked straight at Eliot, and willed him to understand. Her words were vague as fuck, but she _really_ didn’t want to have the ‘I shouldn’t have kissed Quentin, and you should have like six fucking months ago’ conversation. They were friends, or they had been, and she _missed_ having a friend she could count on. But even that conversation would be too blunt without at least three bottles of wine, each.

“Okay,” Eliot said, quiet and nodding at her, and the soft but determined look in his eyes allowed her to let out the breathe she hadn’t known she’d been holding. “Okay, after.”

“After,” Alice agreed, and that genuine smile returned to her face. “Now, let’s figure out how to reach him. Then you can plan what to say. One thing at a time.”

“But that’s so rational,” Eliot said, so dead-pan that Alice almost didn’t hear it for the joke it was. A giggle burst out of her, and it brought a small quirk to Eliot’s lips in response. “You know how I love to do things out of order.”

“Today, we’re doing things my way,” Alice insisted. Then she handed him another tome off the library cart, and motioned for him to get cracking. They still had a lot to sift through. And a depressed, super nerd to save.

-

_The Anti-Verse; Brakebills_

-

“Bacchus!?”

“Yes! I don’t remember your name, but cheers,” he clinked his glass to Quentin’s and then Eliza’s, throwing back the shot and wincing at it. “Fuck that’s nasty. There’s nothing really good here, but the best I could find was in this private haven of debaturey.” He waved to the cottage common area, where Eliot’s bar still took up most of the center and was in tact, even the bottles weren’t all empty. The ‘TADA’ sign was now completely on the ground except for the ‘D’, which was sideways and hung by one stubborn nail. Almost all the furniture was still there, although it appeared everything had been chewed on by a pack of rabid dogs, and the walls were peeling - somehow. Quentin took his shot, because Bacchus was about to look offended if he didn’t, and tried to think about how much Margo and Eliot would approve of the god’s christening of their house.

Fuck, he missed them.

“Quick, a couple more and we can get going,” Bacchus said excitedly, rushing back behind the bar and already skimming the bottles for something with liquid still inside it. 

“Go where?” Quentin asked, looking around and glancing up the stairs as if someone else would come waltzing in. “How did you get here? You were dead-”

“I _am_ dead,” Bacchus corrected, lining up chipped shooters in a row on the bartop. “And so are you, and so is she - but for much longer,” he added with a confused squint but shook it off and filled the shot glasses with a bunch of random liquors. All the labels had peeled off or disintegrated beyond recognition, and even the glass itself was discolored, but Quentin was pretty sure one was a Bombay Sapphire bottle. “Yet here we all are, about to begin a quest! Cheers!” he pushed the shooters towards the two human souls and then took two himself - which he shot at the same time. 

“You’re on the quest too?” Quentin managed to ask, before drinking as Bacchus stared him down. He coughed at that one, his throat felt like it had gone through a sandgrader. “I didn’t know I was getting an entourage. They didn’t have to summon you here.”

“Summon me? Are you kidding, I live here.” Bacchus waved around the room again as if showing them his kingdom. “We all do. Aengus, Enyalius, Iris; where the fuck else would they put us? We’re dead gods.”

“I don’t know,” Quentin said, not sure it required an answer but glancing at Eliza as he said it. “Anywhere else? Mount Olympus?” He didn’t really want to say ‘nowhere’, but he felt the option of the oblivion that had almost been his fate would be the more natural choice. Or was it too much work to extinguish a god entirely? 

“I don’t think they could put a god in one of the final destination spaces,” Eliza told him, leaning in a tad as she said it. “That would be just like assigning a religion to each place. They’re probably too powerful to stash anywhere else.”

“Bingo,” Bacchus said, pointing at her as he said it. “But we heard you were coming, and it’s been so long since I’ve talked to anyone other than Iris. She’s _bitchy_ ,” he staged whispered at them. “The other two are off exploring something, somewhere. We have a whole universe.” He grinned. “I’d be out there too, but I wanted to be the ones to say - Welcome to the Anti-Verse. Everything is fucked. Enjoy your stay.” And he pushed the final shot glasses towards them, not even bothering to toast and they all downed the last of the the sludge-like liquid. “You ready for your quest?”

Quentin was a little flabbergasted, it honestly couldn’t be this easy. Could it? He looked to Eliza, who just quirked an eyebrow at his silence. “Y-Yeah, yeah. Lay it on me.”

“Awesome,” Bacchus exclaimed. “Follow me.”

-

They were led into Brakebills itself, inside the towering white buildings and through the abandoned halls that now resembled sets fit for The Walking Dead. Bacchus sauntered all the way to Dean Fogg’s office, and knocked a rapid succession of ‘shave-and-a-haircut’ then let himself inside without waiting for a response. Inside, sitting behind Dean Fogg’s desk, flipping through fragile books with faded yellow pages, sat Iris. Just as she had appeared on the day The Monster had killed her and ripped the stone it required out of her body. She looked up, glaring already, but that look somehow intensified and sharpened as she saw who stood behind Bacchus. 

“He’s here,” Bacchus told her in a sing-song voice full of joy and anticipation. 

“Really,” she snapped, looking straight at Quentin as she said it. “You? You’re the one on the quest?” She slammed the book shut, dust blooming at the action and few of the pages probably damaged beyond repair from her action. “Is this a fucking joke?”

Quentin just raised his eyebrows in confusion. “No? Not that I know of? Hades didn’t seem to have a… broad sense of humor.”

“Oh it’s broad as the damn Potomac,” Iris snapped again, standing up so she could glare at him at full height. “One of the humans who killed me is here to take part in the first afterlife quest in thousands of years, and I get to be the damn bestower of terms. Me. Thanks a fucking lot, dicks.” She rounded the desk and Quentin almost backed up right into the doorframe, wanting to keep a good amount of space between them. She didn’t look too far from just reaching out and trying to strangle him. Again, it wouldn’t do much - but she was scary. “It’s probably his idea of penance. Fuck, I hate him and his righteous, condescending-”

“Iris,” Bacchus sang again, weaving his way in between the dead goddess and the dead humans. “We have orders, remember? You can’t just bitch out because you’re pissed.”

“And why the fuck not?” Iris demanded, crossing her arms and turning her glare on Bacchus. 

“You really want to test them? I mean, go for it - I want to raid _that_ liquor cabinet,” he pointed to Fogg’s personal stash still locked up behind cobwebs and enchanted glass. “But for you, it won’t end well.” It probably said something about the state of living in a world of death that _Bacchus_ was the voice of reason in the room. Quentin thought about discretely pinching himself to make sure it was really happening. 

Iris, mouth pinched in a scowl, stayed silent for a long moment as she and Bacchus stared at each other, before she spit out, “Fine,” through gritted teeth. 

The whole thing was really, very awkward. Quentin was now glad for the series of shots shoved in his hands back at the cottage.

“You know why you’re here?” Iris directed her next question to Quentin, harsh and to the point.

He swallowed hard, stepping forward a step or two so he wasn’t cowering against the wall any more. “To help my friends. I’m just - not sure how. Or what’s wrong.”

Iris’s lips twitched into the faintest semblance of a smile, a cruel one, and she began with, “that’s not for me to say. Good luck with that.”

Quentin about threw his hands up, but stopped halfway and let them just clap back to his sides in disbelief. “What can you tell me?”

“The actual quest bit. You need to get out of here, obviously. Human souls aren’t supposed to remain in the Anti-Verse, plus the world is in danger of collapsing into a magicless void so.”

“Wait, _what_?” Quentin gaped.

“Oops,” Iris shrugged, then barreled on. “Your quest is to escape, and there’s only one thing that will allow you to do that. Lucky you, it’s also the thing you need to bring with you when you go, for everything topside.”

“What is it?”

Iris’s cruel smile widened. The last time someone had directed a look like that in his direction had been Stacey Cornwell when she pretended to ask him to prom in Sophomore year. “As much as it _pains me_ to admit, I actually don’t know what it is.”

“Do you know _where_ it is?” Quentin sighed.

“Nope,” Iris chirped, and let Quentin flounder in hopelessness for a good minute before Bacchus gave her a look and she continued. “I only know this: to leave this world of the dead, you must find the one thing that is living.”

Quentin glanced at each face in the room, even Eliza’s, but found no one else confused by the statement. “What does that even mean?”

“Exactly what I said. The key to leaving the Anti-Verse is in the one thing that is living.”

“But, nothing is living,” Quentin exclaimed, mouth parted in shock again. “That - that’s the whole point. The whole universe is dead.”

“Apparently not,” Eliza said beside him, catching his eye and giving him a signal to breathe. To calm down enough to hear whatever else Iris wanted to hold back. 

“Yeah, so good luck with that,” Iris added, about to turn away but Eliza reached out and grabbed her arm.

“I have a feeling there is more,” she persisted, as prim and proper as ever. Bacchus looked like he wanted a bucket of popcorn to enjoy the situation further.

Iris glared into Eliza’s impassive face, and wretched her arm out of the woman’s grip, then turned to Quentin and relented. “Before you start, there is something you must do. Or you’ll never succeed.” Quentin nodded that he understood, crossing his own arms to help ground himself - and maybe prepare himself for whatever she was about to say. He had an inkling it wouldn’t be too pleasant. 

“You must first face your death.”

He was right.

“I’m already dead, I already did the whole _Secrets to the Grave_ thing with Penny,” Quentin said, much too fast and already very anxious. “What else could I - there’s nothing else to do. I don’t need to see it. I know - I know what happened.”

“Do you?” Iris pressed, and she turned to walk around him and out the doors. Quentin spun on his heel, watching her retreat, and immediately began to follow her. 

“Seriously, I don’t want to see it again.”

“Well too fucking bad, if that’s what you need,” Iris shouted behind him, navigating the corridors like she’d lived there all her life. “But I’m pretty sure it’s something far more intricate than reliving your swan song.” 

“But why? Why do I have to face my death?” Quentin asked as he hurried to keep up with her.

“It’s the last piece of the puzzle,” Iris stated, turning another corner - and Quentin had a sinking sensation in his chest that dropped all the way to his stomach. He knew where they were going.

“What puzzle?”

“Think about it,” Iris snapped, impatient.

“Sorry, he’s a little slow,” Eliza shouted from behind Quentin. He looked over his shoulder to see her and Bacchus trailing them through the halls of Brakebills. He almost wished they hadn’t, no matter what was about to happen - he actually kind of wanted to face it alone. 

“I don’t fucking get it, what’s the damn puzzle?” he exclaimed as they stopped outside a double set of doors he really wished weren’t still there. Also, he’d like to point out to whichever deity was running his life that he was _sick_ and tired of puzzles. And keys. And mosaics. And alternate universes. He just wanted straight answers, for _once_.

Iris opened the door and pointed inside. “Go on then. We’ll wait.” 

He looked into The Lab, full of dusted glassware and tall windows fogged with age and grime. At the rows of tables and chairs where he’d sat for lectures. The books lining the walls and the jars full of undetermined samples. He gave Eliza and Bacchus one final glance, knowing he wanted to do this alone - but also really not wanting to be alone in his worry. Bacchus was no help, rocking back on his heels.  But Eliza nodded encouragingly at him, a grim smile gracing her lips. This was all part of the quest; and if it was easy then it wouldn’t really be a quest - would it.

He walked into The Lab and let the doors bang shut behind him.

Inside the room, musty and dim, Quentin’s gaze roved over everything and finally landed on what he knew to be the source of this step in the quest.  

Set in the same place it always resided - the mirror.

The same mirror that had housed the seam in the Mirror World, that had caused his death when he mended it to send the captured Monsters into oblivion. Not so long ago, a different mirror in this room had allowed The Beast to walk into his world from Fillory and murder people. Honestly, they should really never have mirrors in this lab ever again. Ever. It never ended well for him, or anyone.

But then he saw something. A darkness moving behind the glass, covered in a film of grime and grease, His reflection was there, distorted like frosted glass, but within it - within the _mirror_ \- he could see something walking towards him. A shadow, as if it was a window, and the familiar outline made his empty chest ache once again. It was painful, and hopeful, and something like mourning filled him until it threatened to drown him.

Quentin moved one foot closer, and forced himself to take the step, then another, until he was close enough to the mirror to see who was on the other side.

The sight made him inhale sharply, although he hadn’t been surprised. He would have known that silhouette anywhere, the gestures, and the voice that filtered through to his side of the mirror like an old speaker box.

He wasn’t sure we was ready.

But he didn’t really have a choice.

“Quentin?”

\--


	5. Episode 505

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I honestly can't remember everything I wanted to say here, I've been working on this chapter until my eyes crossed, but it's finally ready - and this is the chapter that started it all for me. It has the scene that started this whole fic, and I can't even decide if I did it justice or not. I hope I did.
> 
> TW/Notes for this chapter:  
> \- I have taken _one_ creative liberty, and honestly I didn't know it was one until a couple hours ago so I almost wasn't going to mention it. I'm making it so, when Quentin did his minor-mending of the mirror in the Mirror World, his spell worked long enough for him to cast the final monster into The Seam. But when the spell backfired and killed both himself and Everett, it also shattered the connection with The Seam, and the mirror with it. I know it kind of seems cruel and pointless, but it'll be a plot point here: also if a spell ricochets enough to disintegrate two people I feel like it would break a mirror too. But that's just my opinion. I know in the show it doesn't show the mirror breaking, but just roll with it please.  
> \- I have never, ever written a f/f pairing or scene before, so if it's insanely awkward I am so sorry.  
> \- Angst like woah. Suicidal mentions and talks like woah. Feelings like woah. Just, all of it. I actually cried writing parts of this chapter. I worked through a lot of feels that needed to be addressed. This is my Queliot episode.  
> \- I have attempted to beta, edit, search for typos and inconsistencies all on my own. If I missed some, my bad.
> 
> Thank you everyone who is still following this, keeping up with the long updates and the insane amount of plot. I hope you enjoy this chapter, and thank you for reading. <3

 

\--

Episode 505:

Save the Depressed Supernerd, Save the World

\--

_Brakebills South_

-

Penny aimed for whatever room Fogg and Mayakovsky occupied when he traveled himself and Margo to Brakebills South. The two appeared in a cloud of steam and stifling hot air, sent to a floor in the basement that neither had ever seen when they completed their studies there, or Penny had in the weeks he’d been a numerical translator for the Turing Machine. It was a maze of sublevel rooms built and designed by Mayakovsky during his early weeks in exile, years and years ago, to give himself artificial comforts that he soon grew bored and cynical of. 

However, it hadn’t seemed to take Dean Fogg long to talk him into using them during his stay. Specifically, the sauna.

“Christ on a fucking cracker, would you cover up!” Margo hollered as soon as their eyesight adjusted to the fog filled room. She spun on her heel to avert her (now thoroughly assaulted) gaze _and_ to hit Penny squarely in the chest. “And you! Aim your stream like you’re not fucking twelve!”

“I did!” Penny screeched back through the steam, also turning his back physically. Dean Fogg, thankfully, sat with a towel wrapped around his waist as he lounged on the wooden bench seats that surrounded the small room. Mayakovsky - did not. “What is wrong with you!” 

“So happy you are back,” Mayakovsky drawled long and suffering, his ever cheerful self. “And you brought another former student. Should we be expecting more members of your - Island of Misfit Magicians?” He didn’t move very quickly to make himself decent, but Margo gave him an artfully combined stare that was equal parts annoyed and unimpressed. 

“How was The Library?” Fogg asked instead of waiting for a response. “Miss Hanson, good to see you alive and well - as always.”

“Save your ass-kissing,” Margo told him, “I’m still half-pissed at you for all the shit you pulled last year, despite your heroically moronic attack on the Library.” Fogg had the decency to nod in agreement, before reaching for his vodka glass - making both Penny and Margo roll their eyes. Unsurprised.

“Isn’t that counter-intuitive?” Penny pointed out. Fogg just shrugged as he took a pointedly long sip.

“Okay, you two drunk ballsacks enjoy your spa day,” Margo said dismissively, already reaching for the door. “I’m just here for the clocktree.”

“The what?” Mayakovsky spat out with half a laugh, taking the rest of his own drink in a single shot.

“There are no clocktrees here, you want Fillory,” Fogg pointed out, his words slurring a little sideways as he bit back a chuckle of his own. “Must have taken a wrong turn at Albuquerque.” By the smirk on his face, he thought he was very funny.

“Except for the one growing upstairs,” Penny answered, dead-pan with a raised eyebrow.

It was almost miraculous how quickly that sobered up the room.

-

Margo took one look at their operation and decided it needed to be condensed, quickly - because it was ineffiecent as fuck. Penny had been secluded in a room with the Turing Machine while the older Magicians poured over notes in Mayakovsky’s office all the way down the hall. They had done this so the three men wouldn’t kill each other during the tedious hours of data collecting. Margo didn’t give two shits.

There was no furniture in the room Penny had been working in, to make room for the printed code he’d been taping to the floor, so she shoved a desk and a few chairs into a corner and promptly moved every paper and book cluttering Mayakovsky’s work table into piles atop the new space. She also moved the beginning of the printed sections to the far wall of Penny’s lab, allowing the patterns to spread onto other walls and back onto the floor, showing more of the picture as it grew. She completed the remodel with a stern demand to know everything the three men had been doing that led them to where they were now, already sifting through Mayakovsky’s notes.

The print outs indeed were now looking like a tree, or a very zoomed in version of one, with an intricate pattern of gears and dials, vein-like branches reaching for the ends of the papers and extending further into the far outskirts of the equation. But they were finally beginning to see the end of the number system, and with Margo’s new method reaching the ceiling and floor together, it was soon filling every inch of the white-washed walls and fleshing out into a picture of a clocktree. An honest to god clocktree, x-rayed into lines of coded ones and zeros. The roots extended across the entire floor, and the numbers were starting to compound on top of each other in a way that only took Margo five seconds to realize it was extending into the opposite spaces - creating a 3D image. 

Why, in all the worlds out there, did the answer to Mayakovsky’s pocket-world building spells create a literal clocktree?

Margo grilled the old Russian, relentlessly, as she examined the final picture that had taken them the better part of the day to re-create to her standards - the hours already trickling into Antartic evening. Penny wasn’t sure if she’d realized how much time had passed, or if she had truly meant it when she told Eliot she would stay for a few days and appear back at the Library where only an hour or two had passed. He decided not to question it, Margo very obviously knew what she was doing. In the meantime, he let her do what she did best - putting a hot mess back in order like it was her God-given right - as he filled in Dean Fogg on everything that had happened in the mediation room with Penny of timeline 40. 

Fogg rubbed the bridge of his nose and corner of his eyes when Penny finished, specifically relaying their theories and plans in regards to some meddling god pulling strings while others began reformations to remove magic from reality entirely. 

“Well,” Fogg said in a drawn out sigh, “it makes a lot of sense. The world is unchecked. It was only a matter of time, I suppose.” He tastefully didn’t point out that this new information meant that he had been right, and the God-like power that was running rampant throughout all of reality was going to open a whole other can of worms unless it got dialed back. But it was apparent that he hadn’t considered the possibility that it would be erased altogether, and no one was ready for another bout with a world where magic didn’t exist. It hadn’t exactly been a picnic the first time around. 

“That is why we must get to work!” Mayakovsky interrupted them, shouting across the room. Somehow able to keep up with Margo’s interrogation and their subdued conversation fifteen feet away. He’d already been up in arms about storing magic in his counterfeit batteries again, trying to squeeze as much of the god-like power that leaked from the pores of the world into something substantial that could last him until his liver gave out. Margo smacked him with papers in the arm, jostling the drink in his hand, and glared at the man - not afraid of the withering stare he right shot back at her that she matched inch for inch.

“You need to stop fucking with this shit. I understand it better than you, my focus was spell formation maps, and it’s still above my paygrade. And yours!” She smacked him again, and Mayakovsky scooted his chair back out of her reach to avoid spilling any more vodka from his tumbler. “You haven’t even tried to cast any of this clusterfuck, and whatever divine intervention has it’s hand up our ass is already red-flagging everything bigger than a cloaking spell. What do you think is going to happen when you actually try to cast this fucker? You want to get smited? Cause this is how you get your ass smited,” she held up the papers for emphasis, standing up to gesture with them, then throwing the whole bundle at Mayakovsky’s chest. 

“And you two,” she turned on Fogg and Penny, who were just staring and watching Margo’s tirade, “enabling him like this. Were you all just drunk the past two months? Is that what this is? Men drink too much vodka and they pick apart the fabric of the world until a god decides to take away everyone’s toys - that sounds about right.” She snatched Mayakovsky’s tumbler from his hand and drained his glass before the man could protest, then sat back in her chair with a leg crossed over her knee regally and gave everyone very judgmental looks. “We still don’t know why it’s a clocktree, either.”

“The spells are probably from Fillory,” Penny pointed out the obvious. Clocktrees were exclusively a Fillorian creation, two plus two equals four.

“ _Nyet_ , I got them from deep in archives of London Museum,” Mayakovsky said.  

“The books were written in England,” Margo dead-panned.

“From _Egyptian_ archives in London Museum,” Mayakovsky said through gritted teeth. “Were your children books written in 3000 B.C.? Or did I miss the discovery of clockwork inside the pyramids?”

“You’re telling me the London Museum has spell books in it’s basement libraries?” 

“The ones for Magician graduates, yes,” Mayakovsky sneered, “In restricted sections, not available to non-scholars.” At Margo’s pursed lips and Penny’s blank stare of surprise, Mayakovsky scoffed. “You think because you are Brakebills students you know something of the world. You do not. The world is full of magic and various methods of study, research, practice. Every country has its own ways and archives. What you have learned in New York barely scratches surface.”

“That’s what Kady was saying,” Penny muttered, turning back to Dean Fogg. “She’s been making connections with the Eastern countries and universities, but she’s running into diplomatic problems - it sounds like. Certain people want to use the extra magic out there to do some bad shit.”

“And the world keeps turning,” Mayakovsky muttered, drinking straight from the bottle on the table, not even pausing before pouring a few fingers into the tumbler glass Margo outstretched his direction. “There will always be some bad asshole who wants to do more bad shit, it is human nature. War, genocide, conquest.”

“That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do anything to stop it,” Penny spat.

“Oh no, of course not. As long as you don’t expect it to disappear forever, or do not plan for it in future. Sultry-but-damaged should have been preparing for it from start.” Beside him, Margo nodded in agreement as she raised her glass to her lips and sipped the vodka instead of shooting it like before. She had ruled a kingdom, after all, she knew the ends and outs of society from a leader’s perspective better than anyone in that room. “She will have her hands full, but she will be fine. She is strong.”

“I hope you’re right,” Dean Fogg said, hands in his pockets.

“He is,” Margo said plainly, dark eyes smoldering over the lip of the glass. “Kady and Julia can handle this end, I’ve got Fillory, Alice has the Library; once we have our shit in check, we can convince the gods to leave well enough alone. Maybe they will listen for once, and if they don’t - we plan for that, too.”

Mayakovsky pointed at her with the bottle and gave Penny and Fogg a serious stare. “See, she gets it. Maybe the world is not so fucked after all.” Margo smirked in appreciation, and kept her air of regal prestige radiating so strongly neither Fogg or Penny could disagree.

“Now,” Margo said after a long sip of lichen vodka that she imbibed like a smooth and expensive scotch. “I want to see whatever you found at the London Museum, and my Egyptian is shit so Fogg you’re translating. Before I go back I need at least three theories on why the fuck we just grew a clocktree out of numbers in Antarctica.”

It was painfully clear who was now in charge of the clocktree operation, and not one of them dared to argue.

-

_Mumbai, India_

-

In a private office on the 34th floor of the unofficial Magical Headquarters in South Mumbai, Kady and Julia burst through expensive imported oak doors without so much as a knock. Startling the three people standing by the windows already speaking quietly amongst themselves. Julia was barely a half-step behind Kady, although she had never entered the secluded floor in her life, and kept her face neutral. Determined to look as confident as Kady did that she had every right to be there. 

Kady strutted in like the office was actually hers. For all Julia knew, it was.

“Where have you been?” Darsha exclaimed in worry, her wide dark eyes looking over both women as if in search of wounds or ailments. 

“We were summoned to The Library, an old friend from Brakebills has been in charge the past couple months,” Kady told them without preamble, quick to explain the situation at the wary looks on the other three Magicians’ faces. “I’ll fill you in, in a sec - any changes here?” 

“They’ve been quiet,” Rashid said, arms crossed and leaning against the desk pushed close to the floor to ceiling windows. “Unnervingly so. I think they are going to propose something to do with whatever their scheming at the symposium this afternoon.”

“That was fast,” Kady muttered.

“ _I’m_ worried their ranks are growing,” a second man said, younger than Darsha’s professor but older than Kady and Julia. Possibly a former classmate, Julia deduced, as she stood shoulder to shoulder with Kady while they conversed. She was sure if this man was in their inner circle, he probably had at least heard about her - and the tense atmosphere relinquished any introductions for the moment. “I had only six men, last I tallied, but a lot can happen in a couple days.”

“Do you have any idea what they’re planning?” Julia voiced, finally joining in. 

But Darsha just shook her head. “Nothing good. We think they’ve discovered a way to tap into the magical output, or found a channel that has an abundance, and they’re going to use it to cast magics that we haven’t seen in this day and age. Not since Ancient histories. Conquest-type magics.”

“God-level magics,” Rashid added.

“Channels?” Julia questioned. “Magic flows in channels?”

“Similar to the currents in the oceans,” the second man told her, explaining with a comfort-level that made her believe this was probably his scholarly focus. “Our entire planet has become one, giant ocean of magic; and in certain places where Magicians are abundant, like New York, Beijing, Bombay, our sheer numbers control the flow. But in places where people aren’t channeling the magic, it flows freely and finds its own paths and balance. It’s been incredible, the amount of data I’ve procured the past few months.”

“That’s amazing,” Julia agreed, her face alight with the possibility of it all, but careful to keep the smile off her face. This was a serious, emergency strategy meeting and they needed to stay focused.

“Navin,” Rashid said in a warning tone, in tune with Julia’s sentiment.

“Sorry, it’s been all I’ve thought about for weeks,” Navin quickly apologized. “And now, all this is happening.” His aggravated sigh held more disappointing than anger, and Julia could sympathize. The amount of magic in the world should be a good thing, not a weapon for those who didn’t know how to correctly use it. 

“It’s about to get worse,” Kady mentioned, not flinching at the attention her words grabbed. “Our friend in charge of the Library, she thinks they’ve witnessed the gods beginning to erase magic from existence. They’re not just going to turn it off this time.” Rashid muttered a prayer in Arabic under his breath, and Darsha said something very-unladylike under her own. Navin just went pale beneath his head of dark, unruly curls and dusting of day-old scruff. 

“Tell us all you can,” Rashid pleaded lowly, “as quick as you can. We need to leave for the conference hall, soon.” Kady nodded and began to give them an edited version of their time at the Library, covering the giant glowing men that were erasing patterns deep below the foundations of the buildings in the Neitherlands, how the fluxes had changed in other realities, and how the god-level spells (specifically Mayakovsky’s experiments) were starting to bleed the fabrics of other words together. Hence the clocktrees.

“It appears the gods are very angry with us for stepping outside our bounds,” Rashid said, dabbing at sweat that had begun to bead across his forehead and neck. “We still do not know why there has been such an immense amount of magic in the world, but it is obvious we were not meant to wield it.” Julia and Kady glanced at each other, agreeing after a moment’s silent contemplation that they needed to share part of this section of the narrative as well.

“We know why,” Julia took the reigns. “The man who was in charge of the Library before, Everett, absorbed a large amount of magic that had been collecting in a reservoir on another world.” She didn’t know if they knew about Fillory, so she didn’t mention it. It was good to err on the side of caution - just in case it decreased their credibility and the three didn’t take her seriously. If somehow had said the reservoir of magic had been in the dungeons of Hogwarts, she would have laughed in their face, too. “He was destroyed in a battle, and the magic had no where to go. It spilled over into our world, and all the worlds connected through The Library.”

“So no one here is to blame,” Rashid said quietly. “That may help in our favor, but someone would have to appeal to the gods. Which hasn’t been done in millennia.”

Julia winced and tried to not look guilty. “Not… exactly.” Rashid’s eyes snapped up to her.

“We’re working on it,” Kady interjected, stern and ending the conversation. “A group that’s dealt with them before. We will let them focus on that, and _we_ need to figure out how to keep these shitheads in check before they fuck up magic for all of us.” Navin was still shaking his head minutely, obviously scared at even the prospect of being without magic once more - this time for good. 

“Okay, so - new plan,” Darsha said for the first time in a good while. “We need to bring this to the conference. It’s going to be a much better deterrent for these deviants and to bring more to our side.”

“Or it’ll create mass panic,” Kady pointed out, not liking the idea. Julia agreed. “What if they try to declare a war on the gods? Fight for our magic. We won’t be able to calm that down.” 

Julia shook her head. “With where we are in the world, religion is too prominent in everyone’s lives - they won’t want to fight the gods.”

“I’m afraid Darsha is right about this, we don’t have much choice but to tell the truth,” Rashid said as he began to gather things for the conference from around the room and the desk top. They must have been standing in his personal office. Murmurs of reluctant agreement circled the group, and everyone collected themselves enough to present the news to the world representatives gathering a floor below their feet. It was going to be a delicate delivery, and by the steely expression on her face - Kady knew she’d be the one delivering it. Julia reached out and rubbed the crook of Kady’s arm as reassuring as she could be, conveying with a soft look that she was there and would be standing right beside her the whole time. 

This was their fight - they would face it together.

It was all they could do.

-

The conference did not go well.

Within the first ten minutes it became apparent that the six men Navin had flagged, which Julia had officially dubbed _The Legion of Doom_ , were not even there. They had left the building entirely mere hours before the conference, and their designated office spaces had been stripped and cleaned of any evidence to what they were planning. Kady had stared at nothing, wide-eyed, in the filled conference room with members of the magical world and just as many interpreters all collected among rising seats like a lecture hall. The news only brought one word to her lips, “ _Shit.”_

Julia had held her hand beneath the podium where they were seated with Darsha, Rashid, and Navin in the section for Mumbai’s elite Master Magicians. Beside them had been the American representatives that had come in from Brakebills and other US Universities across the continent, which had also watched with rapt attention as Rashid and Kady had described their dire situation. Their need to plan regulations, to not push their magical boundaries too far past what they already knew to be possible (before the magic flux) and to create restrictions for others. If the gods could see them as responsible, maybe they would have a bargaining chip to keep their magic in tact. 

A lot of people protested at the mandates - they had just gotten out from under the thumb of the Library, after all. More demanded to know how they were going to try and contact the gods in general, what made them qualified. Some didn’t even believe them at all. The fear that Rashid had hoped to strike in the conference backfired, and a few Magicians left the room altogether. So, in a quick desperate attempt at finding a common enemy, he brought up the _Legion of Doom_ , and their prominent absence. The meeting was quickly turned to what they fear the men had planned, who they had spoken to and about what, and it didn’t take long for the six men to become the Magical World’s Most Wanted. Inside that conference room they were immediately flagged, burned of contacts, and location spells were being cast in vain to bring the men back to the room to answer to their accused crimes.

One of which was a coordinated attack on the United Nations in Geneva, during a meeting that would house a lot of problematic world leaders. Multiple people who were in attendance in the conference had been approached over the past month for monetary support, supplies, information - anything to further the efforts of what was sounding more and more like a global hostage situation. Julia had felt her throat close up at the mention of the non-magical world being the intended target, of the devastation it would leave behind, of the impact it would have on the world.

How the world would know about them. 

This was a whole other can of worms, blowing the situation up more than anyone had imagined, and it put a lot of people in high gear to locate and shut down the six men missing. Committees formed and split up to cover different areas, and soon the conference dismantled with a new single purpose: find the men responsible, and stop them from carrying out their plans. With a single act they could not only out the Magical world, destroy the global order that had taken centuries to secure, but also eviscerate any and all confidence with the old gods that were already planning on taking away their magic entirely. Julia was scared, she knew Kady was scared, but they both kept their mouths shut and their hands clasped tight between their seats in the auditorium as the world erupted around them. 

They had to handle this.

“We need your Hedge network back up and running,” Darsha told Kady, grabbing both her and Julia’s attention sharply. Kady stared, nodding that she understood and urging Darsha to continue. They were part of their own subgroup that was mostly the Mumbai association and the US/Canadian representatives. “We’re in search and destroy mode. If you can use your street Hedge contacts to burn any bridges these guys may try to use, then I think we will have a better chance of finding them. Most illegal magical channels now flow through New York.” Julia was squeezing Kady’s hand, hard, as her mind got ahead of the conversation - even before Kady realized. They were going to have to go back to New York.

Except, Julia knew Kady wouldn’t want her to give up her studies at the temple. She was going to fight for them to split up, and Julia didn’t want to leave Kady to do this all on her own. An ironic twist. Only weeks previous Kady had been fighting to keep them together and Julia had been ready to split them up for the sake of covering more ground. 

“I can head back this afternoon,” Kady told Darsha, squeezing Julia’s hand back in a short burst of strength that made Julia’s fingers ache. “I’ll go back to the temple to get some things first.” Julia nodded slowly, distractedly, and didn’t say a word the rest of the meeting.

-

“You’re leaving for The Library any day,” Kady insisted, inside the mesh walls and canopy of fabrics that was their cabin in the dense Indian jungle. “With my luck I’ll still be back just in time for Penny to pop in and take you away, and we’ll still be on separate missions.”

“So it won’t matter if I just go with you,” Julia argued, arms crossed and dark painted fingernails digging into her tanned skin. “It’s not like Penny and Alice will lose track of me, they can find me anywhere. I want to help. I can help.” She didn’t want to be left behind like a kid too young to ride the school bus; she was still a capable and intelligent Magician. She was useful, damnit! Kady shouldn’t have to keep shouldering the Hedgewitch operation all on her own. 

“I don’t know how long I’ll be, you should stay here and keep working on your meditation and studies at the temple,” Kady said, coming right up in Julia’s space and prying those sharp nails from the crescent shaped indentations sinking into her forearms. “I know you are capable, trust me - I’ve seen you in action.” Julia hadn’t realized she’d said some of those thoughts out loud. “But you’re still getting used to being human, to having magic back. The goddess-level badassery you want to dish out isn’t going to happen if you keep ditching your spirit journey for side quests.”

“I’m pretty sure my spirit journey _is_ the side quest,” Julia grumbled. “I’m basically grinding for XP points.”

“Yeah, that was the extent of my nerd talk,” Kady drolled out. “I don’t know what you just said.”

“I’ve seen you playing Poke’mon Go around campus, don’t give me that shit,” Julia said, biting back a smile and nudging Kady’s arm as if to push her away, but Kady stayed planted right where she was - barely a foot of space between them. Not letting go of her arms, even as she slid her grip down to Julia’s wrists and finally to her hands, idly playing with the silver rings wrapped around her fingers. “I want to go with you.”

But Kady just shook her head, a mane of dark hair captured in the subtle motion. “No, stay. Eliot will need you more than I do. So will Quentin.” Julia’s mouth, slightly parted about to protest, snapped shut at the mention of her best friend. Her dead best friend, who was no longer a strained and painful memory but a not-so-distant hope of reunion, of second chances. Quentin was always about hope, it was the emotion she loved to associate with him the most. “As long as you’ll come back,” Kady murmured the last part, and if they hadn’t been in the middle of an empty cabin in the jungle Julia wouldn’t have heard her. But she did, and she knew no matter what she said Kady was always going to worry that she’d return to an empty hut - that there was a chance she would because they wouldn’t be done talking to Q. So she did the only thing she could think of to erase the crease of a frown from Kady’s expression, smooth the way her eyebrows were knit together in agitation, and remove any of that bullshit, pessimistic acceptance from her face when she just expected everything to go wrong for her.

She stepped right between Kady’s arms, until her breath fanned across the other woman’s cheeks and the warmth of her body clashed with her own, and kissed her softly. It was quick, solid, unmistakable; a mere trip of a heartbeat long, and Julia could feel that stutter of uncertainty in her chest as she kissed Kady’s lips. But she didn’t rear back, didn’t scowl or even give her a look of pity that Julia also half-expected; just stared with searching eyes as if to make sure it had meant what she thought it meant. Julia’s half quirk of a smile escaped her trembling lips as she gazed right back at Kady unblinkingly. She thought she had been pretty clear.

Kady’s hand was a hot brand on her waist, tugging her close enough to knock their hips together and press Julia’s body to her own. She kissed Julia back, long and hard and with enough force it arched Julia’s spine and had her hands coming up to thread through Kady’s wild dark hair. It felt right, long overdue, and a more solid promise to reunite under the same thatched roof than words could ever conjure. 

It took three days for someone to summon Julia to return to The Library, and in all that time Julia didn’t make a single spec of progress on her meditation journey. Her mind clouded with thoughts of Kady, thousands of miles away in a New York City penthouse doing what she could with a Hedgewitch army, and then sometimes straying to Q - who would have been the one person she would come to about all of this in the first place. She would have so much to tell him when he came back. 

 _When_ , not if - because if she knew anything about the group working tirelessly away in the Library, they would research until their eyes bled if they had to. Just to give her best friend a chance.

-

_The Library_

-

“Here’s something,” Alice said suddenly into the dim glow of her office, catching Eliot’s attention from where he lounged with a large book in his lap, leaning dangerously far back in a chair anchored only by his Argyle patterned socks crossed on top of the corner of her desk. He also had a pizza slice in one hand, from his favorite place on the Upper East side, and was doing his utmost to ignore the niggling need for either a cigarette or his bottomless flask in his other hand. Of which he had neither. But if Alice could summon an errand boy that could get his favorite pizza piping hot from NYC she could probably get him a pack of cigarettes and a decent whiskey. It was the closest he’d felt to himself in a long time, and instead of focusing on that facet of guilt he poured the rest of his energy into the books they’d been plowing through. Will power. “You remember what Julia said about mirrors being a threshold between the world of the living and the dead? I think I found her source material.” She turned a book around so Eliot could read right-side up and slid it across the desk his direction. “It dates back to ancient times, but in this case to sixteenth century Italy.” 

“A notoriously spooky century,” Elito stated glibly, skimming the page in hopes of a hint towards what in the world was happening in sixteenth century Italy. Dates and history weren’t his thing. “Middle Ages?”

“Renaissance,” Alice answered without breaking stride. “Venice was well known for being the production epicenter of mirrors. Someone, somewhere had a breakthrough of making a flat, clear reflective glass mirror without the blemishes or discoloration of past techniques. They were very expensive, not very big, but had the best clarity to date. So, obviously -”

“That’s when shit started to happen that couldn’t be blamed on imperfect mirrors. Gotcha.”

“And Magicians of the time started to study spells and ways to connect to the other side, using this kind of mirror. Mirrors back then were glass with different types of metal fused to it, so there was a lot of overlay with alchemy.” Eliot looked up and caught Alice’s eye behind the sheen of her glasses. “Alchemy is all preparation, hours and hours of work, in a lab. So if there is a spell that will help us locate Q, and set up a connection, it could be based in alchemy.”

“So we wouldn’t have to cast a spell in the Mirror World,” Eliot concluded. “Which, let’s be honest, with our luck that’s where everything is going to have to happen. It’s already an in-between space, and according to this behemoth,” he pointed towards his lap - not making the dick joke that was just begging to be mentioned - where the giant tome he’d been ear-bookmarking much to Alice’s horror was laid across it, “that mirror that housed The Seam is basically a giant conductor of all things other-worldly.”

“Even though it’s broken?” Alice asked, slow to do so because she didn’t want to shut down their only lead, and Eliot still had this snap tendency to retreat into silence when his plan didn’t pan out. 

“Especially because it’s broken,” Eliot said with a small twitch to his mouth that could have been a smile, but it was gone before Alice could scrutinize it. “When the Mirror World backfired on Q’s spell, you’re assuming it broke that connection with The Seam. Honestly, that worries the absolute fuck out of me but we aren’t going to look into that right now. But the mirror itself still has a lot of residual magicness about it that doesn’t interfere with the Mirror World’s rules and regulations. So we might be able to find a loop hole and use that, with your alchemy angle, to reconnect with wherever Q is at. As long as he has a mirror, too.” He finished his analysis on a somber note, knowing how far-fetched it all sounded as soon as he finished saying it.

“I’m pretty sure his journey has a side quest that leads him to a mirror,” Alice told him with a thin smile, forced and a little bitter. “If someone is pulling all our strings, this isn’t going to be a wild goose chase. We still have to put in the work,” she gestured to the piles of books and papers and notes around them, “but I think we’re going to get more divine intervention to push us the rest of the way there.”

Eliot threw his pizza crust into the box and grumbled out, “I’m sick of divine intervention. Immortal beings need to find a different Scooby gang to obsess over.” Alice nodded in agreement, biting her lip to not point out that without this divine intervention they wouldn’t even have this chance to bring Quentin back. 

“This looks cozy,” came a voice behind them, Margo and Penny appearing out of nowhere with tote bags full of books and papers, and a few boxes piled into Penny’s arms. Margo glided over on a pair of impossible heals that Eliot knew she’d left back at the Cottage. 

“You bring me any goodies?” Eliot asked as she approached and leaned over to kiss him on the cheek, a prim smirk the color of red summer wine (she’d picked up some more make-up as well, it appeared) radiated how pleased she was to see him kicked back and relaxed. More himself than the wound up disaster he’d been for weeks, trying to cover his grief with a facade that wasn’t the least bit convincing. 

She handed over a bag filled with clothes and other various necessities from his room, his flask among them, but he didn’t reach for it. Instead he grabbed his emergency tin of enchanted chocolates from Germany and rifled through them. “You went to Mario’s without me?” Margo asked, scandalized, while Penny helped himself to the pizza left in the box. 

Eliot just popped a cherry cordial in her mouth that also gave the imbiber an elated sense of energy and refreshment, like three espresso shots without the jitters. “Sent one of Alice’s underlings, she has a whole army at her bidding you know.” Margo just gave him a look, paired with a raised eyebrow, before sweeping the giant book he was still holding into her arms and plopping herself down in his lap as she chewed on the chocolate delicately. 

“Did you actually find something, or have you girls been gabbing the past couple hours?” Margo asked after a moment of skimming the pages Eliot marked, but as she looked through them it was obvious that the two were on to something and she colored herself impressed. Eliot was intuitively smart, not driven and definitely the king of ‘sliding by’ as he spent most of his time focused on self-care and building up his own sense of fulfillment and happiness. Which was very important and Margo always supported that, but it had always irked her just a tiny bit that Eliot didn’t even have to _try_ to pass on through just below B+ standards. When he did try, he could connect dots like - well, magic. 

“No reason it can’t be both,” Eliot told her as he swept her hair over her shoulder and played with it idly. Margo couldn’t hold back the glowing grin that sparked within her, appearing on her face before she had any say in the matter. She did her best to school it, flipping through the book again, but Eliot being Eliot again was the best thing to come back to after her small vacation at Brakebills South. That and the buoyancy of the enchanted chocolates was kicking in, rendering her helpless to the sense that everything was going to be okay. For once. “We will actually need your help here in a minute with your alchemy expertise. But first, tell me why you stole everything in Mayakovsky’s filing cabinet.”

Margo just shook her head and leaned over for a slice of pizza, “No, it’ll take too long. Motherfucker actually found a clocktree in Ancient Egyptian texts, _don’t_ -” she held up her hand just as she heard Eliot open his mouth, “ask. It’s dumb and long winded and I don’t understand it all yet. I get to have my turn of quality time with Alice after we figure all this mess out.” She gestured to the desk that still had piles of papers and tomes and unrolled scrolls all over it. “What Alchemy shiz do you need to know?” she asked around a bite of pizza.

“I thought your Masters focus was on Spell formations?” Penny asked, everyone suddenly remembering he was still there and eating about half the box of supreme like he hadn’t seen food in a week.

“Welter’s Captain,” Margo told him with a glare and a finger pointed at her own face.

“The main wheelhouse is Transfiguration and Alchemy,” Eliot elaborated. “She could have made that a double Masters had she put in the extra credit hours with Professor Marx.”

“Don’t start, that creep bores me to tears and _also_ doesn’t think a woman is capable of working in the ‘competitive field of alchemy’ so he can suck a whole bag of dicks. I had better things to do with my time,” she leaned back as she finished her rant and laid her head on Eliot’s shoulder while he continued to twirl a strand of her hair around his finger. 

With a dramatic thunk on the desk, Alice dropped another book she had yet to show Eliot in the space closest to him and Margo. “I think this could be it,” she said, locking eyes with Eliot and derailing the conversation. He swiveled his chair without so much as a pause in surprise, so he could see the book more easily without disturbing Margo laying against his chest, pivoting them both sideways into the desk and holding up the book with his one free arm. “You know how I said that sixteenth century Venice mass produced all those small perfect mirrors? They were made with tin and mercury, and mercury is extremely easy to manipulate in alchemy.” Margo turned her head to read the book Eliot was holding up as well, squinting as she skimmed the page. “As in we can make it spread to a larger surface area when it hits a substance that is reactive to it.”

“So we can prep it here, and put it somewhere else and watch it expand like a life raft,” Margo added, nodding at the conclusion. “Awesome, where are you going to put it?”

“The empty mirror frame in the Mirror World,” Alice told her solemnly, and Margo swallowed her bite of pizza with a click of her throat. 

“I thought Q fixed it.”

“That was before his minor mending backfired on him, I’m pretty sure the spell ricochet shattered the mirror. It leaked fluid everywhere, when we finally left the Mirror World; I still don’t know what that means or what we’ll find when we try to enter again.”

“That’s reassuring,” Penny grumbled, not looking forward to returning to the Mirror World whatsoever.

But Margo shook her head, “No, the water was excess magic. When the old gods turned off magic before, there was that janitorial guy that just came in and opened up a pipe in the wall and stopped the flow - and you remember the fountains at Blackspire? Magic looks like water, to us anyway. What you saw that day was all the extra shit that broke out of Everett when he exploded, it’s why there’s so much magic all over the damn place on Earth.” 

Alice’s face as Margo explained everything was something the woman would treasure until the day she died. “Why didn’t I think of that.”

“You had a lot on your mind, sweetheart. Don’t sweat it. We got other shit to figure out.”

“So we need one of these old mirrors?” Eliot asked, pulling them back on track. “Ancient, sixteenth century, Venetian mirrors?”

“Looks like we get to rob a museum next,” Margo mentioned with a smirk.

“No, we don’t have to,” Alice said with a long suffering sigh. “I’m… going to call my mom. See if my dad kept something like this in his collections. He loved historical lifestyles and magics.” At the look from the other three in the room, she quickly added, “they were weird, my mom still is. I’m going alone.” Eliot and Margo visibly pouted. “I’ll do that, Margo you work on the reactor material, Eliot you keep focusing on a locator spell we can attach to it, and Penny-”

“I’m going to sleep,” Penny said, standing up. “Because I’m going to have to cut myself over and over for as long as this conversation takes. So I’m going to sleep and grow as many red blood cells as I can.”

“My bed is through there,” Alice pointed behind him, not even arguing. There wasn’t much he could do in preparation for the travelor’s spell to the Mirror World, beyond rest up and sharpen a knife.

“I gotta hit up Brakebills and bribe Professor Lipson for some materials,” Margo concluded, abandoning her half eaten pizza slice. “She probably knows the spells we need too, El you coming this time?”

“Might as well, two birds - one stone,” El said with sigh, helping Margo back to her feet before prying himself from the chair. “Field trip to Earth, kiddies. Sleep well, 23.”

“Take your time,” Penny told them as he disappeared into the back rooms and the three disappeared in a wisp of spell-work from Alice.

Even dragging their feet, it didn’t take anyone more than a day to gather what they needed to concoct a spell and enchant a mirror that could summon Q’s soul to it’s reflection once they were in the Mirror World. While all of that was very good news - it also meant they were back in the Library within half an hour. 

Penny’s cat nap was the most unsatisfactory rest he’d had in his life.

-

Margo went to India to fetch Julia via Penny’s traveling uber service, leaving Alice to finalize the spell preparations - and Eliot to sift through the boxes of belongings for some very important articles from his rooms at Brakebills. Alice lent him her bedroom to change and get ready, not even questioning his motivations. He was glad. Today, the mourning period needed to stop - or it would be all he thought about the whole time. The first step, for him at least, should have been the simplest. 

Unsurprisingly, it wasn't simple at all.

Eliot smoothed down his vest, tugging at the hem to adjust the fit across his chest and shoulders, and turned a few quarter steps to make sure not a single thread or wrinkle was out of place. It was the first time he’d worn something other than black or dark grey in weeks, and there was still something uncomfortable and guilty pressing on his mind at the patterned maroon and wine-red article. So dark it might as well have been close to black, but to Eliot the color was glaring - borderline gaudy and he wanted to rip it off and throw it back on the settee behind him. Same with the silk shirt, a rich eloquent tone of sepia that complimented the deep red vest with it’s subtle ornate fleur-de-lis patterns and the silver accents he’d add; he’d worn this outfit before, many times, and he knew for a fact it had always been one of Quentin’s favorites. It drew this dark, enticing look to his eyes every time Eliot wore it, and Q would square his jaw and look away - or make a small comment on how good Eliot looked. Eliot would say he knew, in his airy way with a smile that masked how pleased he was at the praise, no matter the situation or who the outfit was actually meant for. Now, he was trying to look his best for Quentin, and he felt like a damn circus clown.

His hair was slicked back into submission as best he could make it, he needed it cut badly. He also needed to shave, dark coarse hair smattering along his jawline and chin like soot and highlighting the hollows of his cheeks. But he was too focused on the damn clothes, the smoky smudges beneath his eyes, his dark curls he could do nothing about. He’d lost too much weight, his clothes didn’t even fit him right. He looked terrible, he knew he looked terrible, and it was going to be impossible to hide how much the past few weeks had affected him; scooping out his insides and letting the ever present mourning marinate instead. His soul rotting away as he withered, pushed himself more than he should have, ignoring all of his recovery schedules and just trying to keep moving forward. At first to move on, then to move towards this quest that had been so unattainable it was unhealthy how much he obsessed over it. He was glad he had, looking back and then where he was now, but it hadn’t been kind to him. He hadn’t been kind to himself, hadn’t allowed himself to heal and grieve like a normal fucking human. But what else was new.

And above everything else - he still didn’t know what the fuck he was supposed to say to Quentin. 

He looked into his own face in the mirror, his grey-green eyes that revealed more worry and unease than he’d ever allow himself to show in the months previous. His walls felt paper thin, easily torn down and just waiting for the inevitable. He needed to pull himself the fuck together. He needed to prepare himself, more than just physically, to see Quentin again. If only on the other side of a pane of glass, it would still be Q. They hadn’t gotten to talk, at all, when he’d been freed of The Monster. The last time they’d spoken - just the two of them - they hadn’t said any kind words. No shouting, but no olive branches either. It was the closest they could come to an argument, with how stilted things had become between them since that day in Fillory when they’d had their memories returned to them. The mosaic, Teddy, their home and their life. Since he’d told Q that his feelings he thought he knew were not what they seemed, and if they had a choice they wouldn’t choose each other. Which really, Quentin must had heard that Eliot wouldn’t choose him - because Q _had_ chosen him. He’d been the one that said they should give it a shot, try again. Another whole life, just waiting for them to live it. They’d been so happy in Fillory, Q had been happy. He’d lived to die of old age.

But here, he’d died at twenty-five. Miserable, defeated, and ready. So ready he’d helped it along all on his own.

Eliot did his best to not think about that domino effect. How Quentin had also been ready, at Blackspire, to stay behind for them. A metaphorical suicide in that he’d stay thousands of years trapped with a monster, instead of live another day in their world. How he’d spiraled with no one there to help. How, if you laid it all out on the table, this final descent began the day Eliot told him that no - they wouldn’t work the second time around. The day he ran, behind pretty words, and let Quentin think he’d been dumb to even ask about it. 

Was that too conceited of him? Q had always been depressed, suicidal, but coping and living on hope. Hope was what drove him forward, what kept him always trying again and again to fix the magical land he staked so much in. In his friends he loved more than family. Eliot had never thought he needed family, after the one that he was born into and how he grew up, but Quentin had taught him different. Over and over again. Quentin was his family, and if nothing else he needed to let the man know that. Know how much he meant to Eliot, and to all of them. Maybe, that would be enough.

Or maybe Quentin wouldn’t even want to speak to him.

“You’re going to get worry lines,” Margo said behind him, her deep comforting tone somehow gentle in it’s clarity. 

“Too late,” Eliot answered, trying for airy and sounding breathless instead. He was still tracing over his reflection: his face, his clothes, his stance, the haunted look he couldn’t shake from his expression. Margo appeared beside him in the mirror, and he tore his eyes away to look to her in desperation. “I don’t think I can do this.” Margo straightened his tie, needlessly because he knew it was perfect, but he knew if he tried to fix it again she would see his hands trembling. He shook his head minutely and looked down to his overly polished shoes. “If he doesn’t listen, or I fuck up and don’t say what he wants to hear, I can make this so much fucking worse-”

“Hey,” Margo cut her stare to Eliot’s and snagged on so he could only look at her. “You and Q - you always know what to say. Stop thinking about it. He just wants to hear you. He needs to, and he probably knows it. Penny said this quest is happening on both ends; he needs something from you too.”

“What if I can’t help?” Eliot pressed, his breath dragging through his chest like broken glass. “I’ve always told him what I thought would help, what he needed to hear,” he trailed off, thinking of that day early in their friendship when he revealed he’d killed someone by accidental telekinetic vengeance. Just to give him something to relate to. He’d known Quentin barely a week by that point. But he said what he knew would resonate, the truth. “I’ve always told him the truth.” Except for that one day, in Fillory. It clawed at his guts with guilt and he swallowed heavily.

“Then that’s what you give him,” Margo said, plain and simple. She brushed an unruly strand back behind Eliot’s ear, tugging on it to get his forlorn attention once more. “All you have to remember, and really remember it, El - is this isn’t about you. I know you hurt, and you regret a lot more than what you have time to address in this meeting, but this isn’t _about you_. This is about Quentin. You have to help him. Then, you can make everything up to him when he’s back. Not before.” she pressed her lips together and smoothed down his vest much like Eliot had done moments before. 

“You’re right,” Eliot managed to utter, trying to breathe correctly. “I can still fuck this up royally, as is my nature - but… it’s all for Q.” It always would be. As much as this could suck, as angry as Quentin had every right to be, Eliot had to try and make himself heard. He had to get through, somehow. “Guess I’m winging it.”

“We always did our best work on that method,” Margo told him with a smile, strained and small.

“I wish you were coming with us,” Eliot said before he could take it back. Truth already spilling out of him like an overflowing dam. If he kept this up he’d have no trouble trying to be honest with Quentin.

“Three is already a crowd, you don’t need me there,” Margo told him. But there was something there, hidden in her face, and Eliot knew it had to do with insecurities she’d never be able to shake. She really wasn’t going because she didn’t think she deserved a spot. That she wasn’t high enough on Quentin’s social ladder to be included among himself and Julia and Alice. Which was ridiculous: she bonded with him first, crowned him in Fillory, was one of his best friends and also part of their family. Eliot hadn’t so much as thought that last line before he was drawing her in and holding her close to his chest, giving her one of the resonating hugs he was known for. That left impressions on your bones, and always broke through any barriers Margo tried to put up.

“I’ll tell him you love him, and miss him,” Eliot whispered, kissing her hair, and he felt her grasp the back of his vest tightly. 

“You better,” Margo muttered back, taking far too long to pull away and look at him with a wet sheen in her eyes that radiated defiance and solidarity. “Bring him back, El. Don’t let him slip away again.”

“I won’t,” El promised, and for a moment he felt it to be true. The only true thing living inside him, behind his appearance of his old self and his facade that he was in the right state of mind to enter the Mirror realm and speak to a dead soul. To Quentin’s soul. He could hold on to that truth for as long as it took.

The truth that he would do everything he could to help Q come home.

They appeared outside Alice’s room to find everyone standing by the fireplace, packed and prepared.

Julia looked him up and down and gave him a small, kind smile. “You ready?” she asked in the most supportive way it almost made him feel bad for all their unpleasant history. But Eliot was already tapped out on all the things he felt bad about, and he was honestly just glad she was coming to help him get through to Q - even if she wouldn’t be the one talking to him. Julia Wicker wasn’t a bad second to have in his corner, in the more-than-likely-event he fucked up too badly to recover.

“As I’ll ever be.” 

It was time.

-

_The Mirror World_

-

Everything was obscenely bleak. White walls, dark shadows that layered in dreariness, everything appearing just as it had in the Brakebills student lab but backwards. The shelves were on opposite sides of the room from what memory dictated, as were the windows which faced an exterior so grey he almost couldn’t see the white snow-ish substance falling in a sloth-like flurry. It was cold, and still, and Eliot wasn’t sure that the pocket world they entered wasn’t it’s own little circle of hell. It felt like it.

Julia and Penny were right behind him, the only breathing shapes and moving colors in the space, and Eliot wished he wasn’t at the front of their little trio so he’d have something to draw his eyes to. Something besides the gilded mirror frame standing in black and white like an old photograph propped up to taunt them.

Broken shards of glass glittered on the ground, reflecting impossible light and shimmering as if wet. He stepped around them, not trusting the liquefied magic still clinging to the shattered pieces. But the frame with its wooden backing stood for the most part unscathed. One corner up in the top right was splintered like it had been hit with birdshot, and Eliot had a sinking feeling that that was where Quentin had cast his spell. The spell that had killed him. The ambient magic still flowed off the thing in waves, akin to radiation and his entire body reacted to it with a buzzing sensation. The magic channeled through him and every other Magician at all times threatening to come out in this intense vacuum of a space. 

In his hands he held the Venetian mirror Alice had procured. It was barley ten inches wide, heavy and solid and smooth as the surface of a pond, but binded with living metal thanks to Margo and Professor Libson at Brakebills. The object seemed to have a heartbeat in his hands, warm beneath his fingers and waiting to be released. As much as Eliot wanted to be out of this Mirror World as soon as possible, and as much as he wanted to talk to Quentin, he also really didn’t want to let the small antique go. He wasn’t ready, fuck he didn’t know if he’d ever be ready - but again, not much choice. Penny was literally bleeding out behind him, keeping the mirror on the other side of the room open and ready for their retreat. 

So with a steady breath that made him sound more sure of himself than he was, and one last glance back at Julia standing vigil and supportive about ten steps behind him - Penny further back tracing a design in fresh dripping blood on the mirror surface - he faced the wooden frame that stood taller than he did (which was saying something) and extended the small hand-held mirror towards it. 

The square of metal and glass flew from his hands and snapped to the back of the mirror frame like a magnet. As soon as it made contact it melted, bubbling into a molten metal and reached and spread with sentient motions. Filling the space quickly and messily until it reached the edges and lapped back against itself, a pool of silver that only began to steady when it had nowhere else to go. For a few terrifying moments Eliot worried it would spill over the sides of the mirror’s frame and try to encompass the whole room. But at least it stilled, tiny ripples of reverberation simmering out to nothing until all Eliot could see was himself and the room behind him. The metal solidified when it stopped, and fogged up in frost that made the reflection harder to make out. But once it had acquired this topical film Eliot could see the spell formation maps within the mirror, lit up in thread-thin layers of light as the spell worked through the motions without actually conjuring anything into the Mirror World itself. Eliot let out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding, blessing Margo and Alice and their insane amounts of combined intelligence between them. Julia let out a breath audibly behind him, and he turned to give her a nervous twitch of a smile.

They were alive, now to wait for the next part.

Eliot slowly approached the mirror, warily eyeing the glowing spell that pulsed in a faint humming sound - like a dial tone - trying to reach their quarry wherever he resided. Shadows grew long and distorted within the mirror, past his reflection of the room and past the circular spell formations, and the longer they grew the more the room behind him disappeared. The more his own reflection dimmed, creating a strange two-way mirror to a dark world beyond where he stood. But it was still the lab, he was sure of it. The shadows twinned what already stood there, the shelvings and desks and cabinets, the tall windows and lab tables. He took another cautious step, keeping a good ten or fifteen feet between himself and the mirror as it worked its magic (ha), but then he swore he saw something move. A shadow, tall and dark, and he took another step closer before he could stop himself. 

The shadow was definitely person shaped, stood far back in the room, further than himself in the mirror. But the closer he got he couldn’t make it out, and the shadow didn’t move forward any further. The hesitance, the stance, it was a fucking blob in the mirror and yet-

Somehow, Eliot knew. It made his mouth go dry, and somehow he still managed to procure a sound. A name.

“Quentin?”

It didn’t move. Eliot closed the space between himself and the mirror, his voice loud in the still room and he became painfully aware of Julia and Penny at his back - but that shadow. When he stopped in front of the mirror, looking past himself, the shadow finally approached from the opposite side, and it _felt_ like Quentin. It was the same height as Quentin, same width of his shoulders, Eliot had 50 years to memorize every line of Quentin’s shape - he could recognize him in the dark. Which he was kind of doing, he supposed. But still he strained his eyes to try and see, to make out any details in the murkiness. So he spoke again into the quiet. 

“Quentin Coldwater?” Honestly, he wasn’t sure how many souls he could encounter named Quentin, the location spell had been pretty specific. But it felt like the next logical step. Somewhere in the back of his mind he remembered their first meeting, and how ridiculous Q’s name looked on the card Dean Fogg had given him. Q had been so confused that day, adorably so - staggering forward across the green lawns until he was standing in front of Eliot, being the extra shit that he was. God what a day, what a week. What a life.

He almost opened his mouth again, not sure what to say to get the soul on the other side to speak to him. If it was Quentin’s soul and not some cruel trick. Maybe it couldn’t hear him, could he write on the glass like a fogged up window? This was going to be some bullshit if they were literally separated by an enchanted pane of glass but couldn’t communicate whatsoever. Someone, somewhere, was laughing at him and he just knew it.

“This is some Mirror of Erised shit, right here.” The voice filtered from nowhere, distant and muffled like through an old telephone, but it was Quentin’s voice. Unmistakably, solidly Quentin. Holy fuck, it was _Quentin_. He had breathed out the words in disbelief, an emotion distorted by the distance caught in his throat, and Eliot could relate. His own throat had swollen shut and he wasn’t sure he could swallow or breathe or speak. Cry, possibly, but he tamped it down and tried to find his voice - somehow far from his grasp as he stared in disbelief at the mirror of moving shadows. Quentin beat him to it. “Are you going to tell me I’m late?”

A laugh punched out of Eliot, he felt it right in his gut, and it hurt to breathe but god the relief was like novocaine to his entire body. It was fucking _Quentin_ , he was actually there. “I - I want to say that’s Harry Potter, but I also want to say it could be Hunger Games?”

“Oh, come on - you didn’t read Hunger Games, either?” Quentin’s exasperation pulled a lot of other feelings from deep in his chest, and the ridiculousness of their whole conversation was intoxicating. Surreal. Eliot could recognize the silhouetted shape, blurry as it was, and watched Quentin tug a hand through his hair, pushing it up and out of his eyes, and his insides ached. He couldn’t describe the way the relief shed all the dark and heavy sentiments from his very soul, but it felt like a snake’s skin, peeling away to something fresh and new underneath that he didn’t dare to name.

“Or Lord of the Rings, but I did finish those movies,” Eliot rattled off, his hands shaking, his heart and lungs trembling in his chest. He looked into the mirror more intently, ignoring the burning sensation in the corners of his eyes, how they were wet and threatened to blur his vision even worse - and tried to find any details in the dark shadows of the mirror. But Quentin’s voice, the spark it brought and the easy sigh of fond exasperation that laced it, pulled his heart tight against his ribs. It just didn’t feel like enough. “I can’t see you,” Eliot mentioned quietly, not even aware he spoke it loud enough for Quentin to hear, still tracing the silhouette in front of him like any moment he would begin to appear.

“I can see you,” Quentin told him, his shape growing a bit larger as he took careful steps closer to the mirror. “You look -”

Eliot stared down at his shoes, physically tearing his eyes away from the reflection, and clasped his hands behind his back. Quentin didn’t need to finish his sentence, and Eliot wan’t vain enough in that moment to think that Q was admiring how his shoulders look in that vest. 

“I know,” he answered, aware of how run down he looked. How much he hadn’t recovered from what The Monster did to him, and how much he’d driven himself down even further after the fact. “It’s been a - difficult month for me.” He didn’t want to emphasize how much Quentin’s death wrecked him, but it was hard to tiptoe around it when he couldn’t even hide behind the murky glass.

“Only a month?” Quentin asked quietly.

“I”ve been in Fillory,” Eliot clarified, glancing up at the shadowed mirror and seeing no change in definition. “Then the Library with Alice figuring - all this out,” he gestured to the mirror and the room he was still standing in. Starkly white in comparison to the dark world on the other side of the glass. His heart caught in his throat, mentioning Alice and not knowing Q’s reaction to it, but he heard simultaneous words in his head as soon as his thoughts turned down that path. _‘After’_ , Alice insisted. _‘This isn’t about you_ ’, Margo reminded him - and Eliot nodded minutely at the fresh memories. With a deep breath and a squaring of his shoulders, he forcibly lifted his head higher and looked right where he could imagine Quentin’s face was on the shadowed form in front of him. Once more finding his voice. Clear, level, present. Sympathetic. “It’s been about six months on Earth.”

“That’s - a weird ratio,” Quentin mentioned, slow and trailing. Sometimes three days on Earth could be a year in Fillory, or an hour in the Library could be two days; every time they thought they had it figured out, the universes switched it up.

“Yes, well. Fillory is fucking funny that way,” he muttered idly. Eliot could hear the huff of laughter from Q, and he could imagine the smile. The brightness of it. The need to see it, ripped away from him for some unknown fucking reason, was criminal and hurt physically - penetrating down to his bones. As did the awkwardness between them, the conversation stilted, physically palpable like shared breath. 

If only he could see Quentin’s face.

-

_The Anti-Verse; Brakebills_

-

Eliot was a vision, as always, but a barely contained one. Wrapped from head to toe in gossamer clothing and charm that always looked amazing on him, was such a part of him and how he grounded himself. The months when The Monster had inhabited his body and dressed in whatever it could find that was easiest to move in had been surreal and disturbing. A clash of who Eliot presented himself as and the bare basics of what was still him shining through The Monster’s playtime. Quentin had always focused on his eyes, his hands, his face, and it had made it so hard to remind himself that it was an abominable creature and not Eliot; but that had been his mistake. He hadn’t wanted to lose any bit of Eliot during those long, torturous months. He kept it in the forefront as a reminder of what he was fighting for. How he could have ever forgotten was almost laughable. The Eliot standing in front of him was more than just the clothes on his back, the grooming that hadn’t been fully completed, it was the way he breathed and the way his eyes searched and his stance - that was what Quentin had missed. What he had nearly failed to recognize once and swore he never would again.

But now, Eliot was barely holding himself together. Quentin had known him too long to not recognize that, even as happy as he was to see him. The way Eliot held himself straight and like his chest was buoyant atop a sea of weightlessness reminded Quentin of when he himself had been recovering from their big battle with The Beast. Of course Eliot had gone to Fillory, Quentin had been around long enough to learn that Margo’s axes made Eliot’s wounds incapable of magical healing - it had been a real fear of his that Eliot would die on that table because Professor Libson wouldn’t be able to help him. Had that been one of the reasons he ran to aide in throwing the captured creatures into The Seam? He hadn’t wanted to be around to watch Eliot die, when he’d spent months upon months trying to save him? It all seemed so long ago he couldn’t even remember, but he swallowed down the guilt that threatened to bubble up like bile at the mere suggestion of it. 

Also at the realization at how _badly_ Eliot had been coping. He may have gone to the centaurs in Fillory to aide in his healing, but he hadn’t given himself the chance to heal properly. That was obvious, painfully so, and Quentin swallowed again - hard enough to hurt - and was glad for a moment that Eliot couldn’t see him. He knew his face would betray him in that moment. 

“Q,” Eliot began, green glass eyes searching the depths of the mirror, looking right through Q but somehow still at him. Flashes of fondness and pain and something that he thought might have been guilt. Regret. “You died.”

Oh.

No more playful banter.

“I died.” He said it quietly, a different tone to the last time they said these words to each other. Only this time it was Quentin that had died first, Eliot that had to put him to rest. Or the memory of him, since he hadn’t even had a body to lay in the ground. Quentin remembered this moment, their conversation in Margo’s throne room, next to the mounds of wedding gifts she didn’t want. Remembered the floods of memories from their previous life rushing into his mind and his awareness until every nerve-ending tingled with it. Fillory still hadn’t had magic at that point, the combined rush of the spell and the sheer power of recovering 50 years of moments and tears and joy in a single instant had been over-powering. He’d lived to an old age, something that he’d never expected to happen in the present day - and what ultimately ended up not happening at all. But back then, in his life with Eliot by the mosaic, he had lived until he was old and stooped and grey. They had a family, they had lived and raised children into actual functioning adults - that functioned way better than either of them had at their age. They had grandkids, great-grandkids, and no matter the trials and tribulations they had encountered they had never given up. On each other, or on their task to finish the mosaic and find the key. They had accepted their fate and embraced their life, after a few trips and stumbles - but that’s what life was, wasn’t it? Trips and stumbles, getting back up, and holding on to the things that matter most. 

All of that, in an instant, and Q hadn’t even had to think twice about asking Eliot to do it again. He wouldn’t have traded one day in their little thatch-roofed house for anything. 

And for a split second, Eliot had looked on board, and Q’s heart had soared. They worked, they had solid proof of that. Years and years of it. Proof of concept. 

Until he’d kept talking, trying to point all this out with excitement making his hands shake, and Eliot’s face had changed. Coming down from the high of a full life lived and magic flowing through them to entice it, realization crossing his features just as Quentin found himself on the down swing as well. No matter how adamant he felt in that moment, or insisted he was right, Eliot could always talk circles around him. Convinced him it wasn’t what he thought it was, not here in their version of the real world. 

It took dying and reliving those moments for Quentin to see the truth.

“You died,” Eliot repeated, voice held so tightly to contain any wavering. But Quentin could hear it, see it tremble about him. “And I didn’t.” The one place the narrative changed. “I woke up and you weren’t there.” His words weren’t angry or resentful - just haunted, as haunted as his sleepless eyes and grief stricken expression that was so thinly veiled behind this bullshit attempt to stand tall in front of Quentin. Dead Quentin. The fond exasperation intensified ten-fold and Q knew if he had a heart in his chest at all it would have burst already, but instead the guilt manifested and started to drag his chest cavity into his stomach. “I never got to tell you anything.”

“Tell me what?” Q was pretty sure he knew what, but the fact he was dead changed the whole meaning of the conversation - the drive behind it. That was the saddest part.

Eliot just shook his head, ridding himself and Q of that train of thought before it got too far off the rails. “I just had a lot of time to think, while I was locked up in my head. A lot of memories to sort through, but it’s not important right now.” He was trying to center himself on the reason he was even there. Quentin for the first time realized that Eliot was actually there, and he wasn’t in the Physical Kids Cottage or his bedroom or even the Dean’s office, not even in Fillory - he was somewhere else, he had gone to great lengths to talk to him about something important. It probably wasn’t anything to do with past mistakes.

But Quentin was dead, and as an resident of the dead world surrounding him - he had the right to not give a flying fuck for 10 minutes, and want to sort out the life he left behind. 

“When I died,” Quentin interrupted, before Eliot could manage a single syllable further, “your life does kind of flash before your eyes. Sort of. It expands and condenses in weird ways, and you relive every second of it. But - it gives you this really crystal clear comprehension about it all. Really clear. I could see a lot of things that I wasn’t able to before. How wrong I was to give up, how much in denial you were. How dumb it all was.” He heaved a breath to unrattle his nerves, he wanted to flat out say what was on his mind but wasn’t sure how, not when Eliot was looking at him the way he was. Wide-eyed and scared in a way Quentin hadn’t seen from him in decades. Centuries, it felt like. “We were both really stupid,” he said low and quiet, almost a whisper, but there was no malice in his tone. Just sad affection. His one true North when it came to Eliot Waugh, and how even though he couldn’t see Quentin’s face - the mere tenor of his voice was enough for him to understand. Eliot would always understand him.

In that moment he understood that Q forgave him for his fuck-up, in the way the dead forgive the living for the breath in their lungs and the beat of their heart. It was all a fond memory now, a distant scenario that could have been a defining moment. Could have changed a lot of things.

But Quentin was dead, and Eliot was not; and Q forgave him for breaking his heart.

“Yeah, I guess we were.” Eliot looked down and away again, but not enough to hide the sheen of tears filling his eyes. Quentin could recall the burning sensation it would have brought with it, how the edges of his vision would swim and blur, how it would make his throat swell shut and choke any words or sentiments that he would try to speak. He didn’t think he was capable of crying anymore, but he was feeling every inch of the trauma vicariously through Eliot’s image in the mirror.

“Listen,” Eliot surged forward, blinking rapidly and unabashedly rubbing at the bridge of his nose to disguise how he was wiping away tears. “I don’t - I don’t know how much time we have here. So this conversation, which is long overdue and I’m really sorry I’ve been a dumbfuck about it, will have to wait until after.”

After? “Until after what?” Quentin was confused. It kind of seemed like this was it. This was their chance to get closure, the moment that they didn’t get between when Eliot was freed of The Monster and when Q died in The Mirror World. To say goodbye. There was no after, not for them.

It hurt his non-existent heart to admit that.

“After we bring you back,” Eliot told him with such conviction, sure-headed and level, that it knocked the wind out of Quentin. Bring him back - to what, to life?

“I-,” his voice fucking failed him. “I can’t.” He didn’t blink, didn’t look away, even as he braced himself for the look of devastation on Eliot’s face. He didn’t want to see it, or say those words, but he couldn’t just _leave_ . His journey hadn’t even started, he still had to figure out how to help them on Earth. He didn’t even know what was going wrong up there. Eliot didn’t know it, but he _had_ to help them, and his quest was here in the Anti-Verse. He couldn’t be resurrected before it even began.

But Eliot’s expression didn’t flicker, didn’t even look surprised as he waved away the words like shooing a pesky insect. “I know you still have your quest down here, and we aren’t even ready for you yet. I’ve got a whole shitload of things to do first. I have to figure out the spell and components and how to get your soul back - Penny said he could help on his side in The Underworld once I figure out how to even retrieve you from wherever you are, or where your quest takes you. My eyes hurt just thinking about the research we’re all going to have to do on top of all the other shit going on, but we’re pretty sure it’s all connected so I’ve got you covered. Kady and Julia are trying to keep shit together on Earth, Margo’s fucking with Fillory - which is whole other cluster I can’t even get into right now. So is the Library, Alice is superwoman as far as I’m concerned. I don’t know what Penny’s doing but it has to do with Makaykovsky and clocktrees - again, we’ll go through all of this after.” Eliot paused to inhale, the whole speel flowing out of him on what seemed like one exhale, but it was the first time Eliot seems poised and more like himself. He’d been so cool and collected the last time he’d come to Q’s rescue in Blackspire. The grief-stricken mess before him had been a striking contrast, but this version of Eliot was definitely the one Q remembered. He had it all down to bullet-points, and his whole body alined with that sure level-headedness. “After we have you back.”

“Sounds like you’ve got a solid plan,” Quentin said just to fill the space, needing a moment to get his feet back under him and his head back in the conversation

“Yeah,” Eliot drawled, long and troubled, “-except for one thing.”

“There’s always something,” Quentin tried for light-hearted, to ease the tension in Eliot’s shoulders and the dread in his face. “Otherwise everyone would be resurrected.” He was still trying to wrap his head around it, that he was going to get another shot. After this epic-level quest he had to embark on with Jane fucking Chatwin and Baachus, which he still had no clue how to even start or finish. So really, the fact that there were even more obstacles was just one more to add to the pile. He wasn’t overly worried about it.

Until Eliot’s prolonged pause drew it out of him, a worry that started in his gut and clawed its way up to his throat. This was what Eliot had come for, and he’d been avoiding it - that alone was daunting enough.

Eliot looked straight at him, and if Quentin hadn’t known any better he’d have thought Eliot could see him. That the distance in his eyes wasn’t for lack of focus, but because he was steeling himself against what he needed to say. 

“Q you killed yourself,” Eliot said, quiet enough to be a whisper, but each word hit Quentin’s chest like a bullet. 

Well, shit.

Sure, _he_ knew it, and he bet the others had a least a guess - Alice and Julia, Eliot in an abstract way - but he hadn’t guessed it would be a main consensus point. That Eliot would say it with such conviction and unequivocal sadness. 

“Q - you killed yourself, and… the spell won’t stick if you don’t want to live.” 

Quentin couldn’t even force himself to breathe, the air that probably wasn’t even really there in the first place was caught in a vacuum and sucked away from him. It was worse than what he imagined. His silence probably spoke volumes, and each passing second placed another block in some kind of foundation for Eliot - grounding him in the moment. 

“So I am here,” he said on an exhale that felt pained, “to help, as best I can.” Quentin watched him struggle to stay centered, to not make it a personal visit as much as he obviously yearned to, and his breath stayed stranded from him. His heart lodged in his throat. “I can’t pretend to understand how you feel, or felt, or where it all ended up. But I want to help - talk this out. Find something that could help us, help you, accept the spell - when the time comes. Find something that _you_ want to live for. Whatever it may be.”

Oh.

Oh, Eliot. 

Quentin’s shoulders sagged in relief and a sad smile graced his face. The vice around his chest unlocking as everything clicked into place. Eliot was trying so fucking hard, and Quentin could barely contain himself in that moment. Fuck, what he felt for that man.

“El, it’s really not as hard as your making it,” he told him, as reassuring as he could be. For once, confident in knowing that he could ease the burden Eliot had taken upon himself. Relishing in the surprise clouding over the grief and dread, the flicker of something Eliot would never allow himself to name - but Quentin knew without a doubt was hope. He was very familiar with hope, as much an old friend to him as death was. He’d lived on hope for years. “It was all of you,” Q clarified, still smiling softly. “That’s why I’m on this greek-tragedy level quest in the first place, to help you. Make sure you’re all okay. I wasn’t going to be able to rest until I knew you would be. I - I owe you all so much. I was always grasping for a reason to live, for hope, before Brakebills. Before I found you, and Margo and Alice, before Julia came back. You’re the reason I kept living, kept hoping the next day would be better. Somehow, knowing that it would be, and if it wasn’t I’d at least still have you.” How they couldn’t see that was baffling to Quentin. How could they not see, not know? “You’ve always been my reason.”

“But it wasn’t enough,” Eliot did whisper this, breathless. “How do you know it’ll be enough, if it wasn’t before?” The spell they found must have been very specific, but it didn’t worry Q in the slightest. For once, he didn’t question his answer. He knew the truth.

“I know,” Quentin assured him, “and I can’t promise it won’t happen again. Finding myself that low. It’s not something I can control, El, it’s something I lived with. But it was easier to bear - with you. It’s more than enough. Trust me.”

-

 _The Mirror World_  

-

The way Quentin said those words, _trust me_ , eased a tension inside Eliot’s spine and chest - and with all his heart he wanted to believe them. Believe Quentin knew what the fuck he was talking about. He was on the other side of the veil, he could see all or whatever the fuck happened after someone died. But that small seed of doubt nudged it’s way into a corner of his brain and stayed there, rooted itself and reminded him in whispers that he couldn’t get swept up in Quentin Coldwater. Not right now, not when it mattered so much. 

He used to be so good at snuffing out that voice. 

“Okay,” he said instead, a sigh that shuddered on the exhale as he spoke. Honestly the whole thing was a crazy one-shot chance that could be fucked up a million ways _other_ than Quentin not being right. If Eliot was going to latch on to any kind of shred of hope, it was always going to be Quentin. 

_Sweep me out to sea._

The shadow shifted it’s stance, and Eliot knew they were going to have to bring this to a close - the living metal wouldn’t last forever, and he got what he came for, or what he was sent for. They had the tiniest semblance of a plan, without any concrete details whatsoever but at least both sides were aware of it now. But -

“Will you tell me, what you wanted to say?” Quentin asked, much closer to a demand than Eliot recalled often hearing from him in life. “Did it change after I died?”

He wanted to know if what Eliot wanted to say was only _because_ he died. Eliot had never got to tell him about his mind palace adventures, his hidden door, the memory it was tucked inside of. Of course he wouldn’t know. Of course he would doubt Eliot meant what he wanted to say.

“Only that I was sorry I was too late,” Eliot told him in deep quiet tones.

“What about the rest?”

Eliot just shook his head, denying himself more than Quentin. Too much important shit going on, he couldn’t get in over his head like this. “After.”

“No, not after. Now.” Quentin did demand this time. “What if we don’t get an after?”

What if they failed. What if Quentin didn’t complete his quest, or Eliot couldn’t summon his soul? Build his body? Or if Quentin had been wrong and his soul wouldn’t accept the new body? What if the million things Eliot knew could go wrong _did_ go wrong, and this was the last time they got to speak.

What if death separated them, too?

“I just-” Eliot didn’t even know where to begin. Did he have to go back to the beginning? Lay groundwork for everything that happened that led to his revelation that he was a colossal dumbass and Quentin didn’t deserve what happened? Where the fuck was he supposed to start his apology tour?

“I just wanted to say I’m sorry,” Eliot led with his final thought in the storm in his head. It was small and insignificant in his eyes, and without seeing Quentin’s face he had no way of knowing if it held any impact whatsoever, but at least it was true. Down to its basest form. “I’m sorry I ran away.” Quentin had to know what it meant, when he was referring to, and really all the times after that. _I was looking forward to going on a boating quest with you._ “I’m sorry I lied. I was afraid and I made you believe you were wrong.” Which, in all honesty, he still wasn’t sure how he had convinced the other man of that. “Proof of concept is supposed to mean you can’t argue with it, right?” the laugh that came with those words was humorless and hurt Eliot’s throat. “You didn’t deserve any of it, you especially didn’t deserve to feel like -” Like you didn’t matter. Like you weren’t worth it. Not even enough to _try_ . Eliot couldn’t bring himself to say it, but the words had to be painted across his face. He hoped they were. “You deserved so much better than,” he swallowed down the emotion rising up and filling to the roof of his mouth, and forced himself to finish. “Than me. And I swear to you, Q, I will do _everything_ that I can to bring you back and-”

A thick dark shadow appeared on the mirror, distinctly outlined, pressed against the far side of the glass. It was a hand. Fingers splayed and connected to the form he’d been staring into like an abyss the whole conversation. He recognized the shape, the length of the fingers, how they looked holding a book or turning pages, how they moved when they cast spells. How they fit inside his own. 

His own fingers shook, but he took that single step closer to the mirror so he could press his hand against the glass, forgetting to be afraid of the living metal, but the reflection was solid and cool, and his hand masked Q’s own. Something heavy and substantial awoke the nerve-endings in his fingertips, in his palm, and for a moment he thought he could feel Q’s hand against his own. A thin layer of something with much more give than glass between them. Then he looked up and choked. 

All the air in the room vanished, and he couldn’t breathe.

-

Eliot was silent, eyes wide - and for a moment Quentin wasn’t sure if he was actually breathing. His stormy hazel eyes began to really tear up, this time not held back by any semblance of self-control from the taller man. His eyes were flooded, his mouth pressed tight together, but his lips began to tremble and shoulders began to shake. 

It took Quentin far too long to realize.

“Can you see me?” Quentin didn’t know what he actually looked like, but he could guess. He knew his hair was longer than it had been when he died. He had chopped it off some time during The Monster’s reign of terror, tired of the thing sliding Eliot’s fingers through his long locks lovingly when all it did was make him shudder in disgust and distress. He knew his clothes were faded jeans and a muted blue/grey plaid shirt over another grey t-shirt, so not the most flattering or vivid thing - like a faded photograph of himself. But that could also be making it worse, he thought in retrospect.

Eliot managed to nod, the tears brimming but not falling, and he held himself so tightly composed Quentin didn’t know how he was still keeping himself standing. 

Oh, and there he went.

Eliot slid to his knees before he could stop himself, and by the quick slice of devastation on his face Q knew the connection of their hands was what released the sub-spell in the mirror. His own knees hit the ground as he quickly pressed his hand back to Eliot’s on the mirror, now level with Eliot’s eyes and he stared right into them until he _knew_ without a shadow of a doubt that Eliot was seeing him. Actually seeing him, his face, his expression, and how serious he was about to get.

“Okay, El, listen to me,” he made his tone as firm as he could muster, and Eliot managed to blink, a single tear tracing down the sharpe angles of his face at the action, but he was more present now. “You need to promise me you won’t do what I did. When that thing was in control of you, I did everything I could, I gave everything but -” He remembered the blood under his nails, the weight of a dead body as he dragged it across the ground, the pain when his arm broke and the shock of pain that still occurred when it was mended. He recalled the terror, the fear for himself and for Eliot, the immense and total hopelessness when he thought Eliot was gone forever, the sinking feeling of dread every time they hit a dead end and he thought he’d never save the other man. All of it. And how it all ended.

“The Monster literally had it’s hands around my throat, more than once. You can’t allow that to happen,” Quentin pressed, his gaze alone the only thing yearning to make Eliot understand. “Because if you kill yourself trying to bring me back, then I’m going to have to bring _you_ back and that’ll be even harder I’m sure, and it’ll be a whole thing.” A vicious cycle, but Quentin would dive in head first, he knew he would.

“Don’t Winchester this up, got it,” Eliot choked out, but in the overwhelming emotion in his voice were traces of himself. Of him finally coming back to himself. 

“Yes,” Quentin said with a smile that was strained and relieved at the same time. “Terrible role models. I don’t know why you like that show.” And Eliot grinned back, but this time it had nothing to do with Q’s terrible quips and pop culture references. His eyes shone, his grief and weight cleared, and Quentin knew how much lighter he felt. Could see it glow within him. “Eat something, sleep, _shave_ \- I can’t believe Margo let you go out like that.” Eliot laughed in an uncontrollable burst, and it was the most musical thing Quentin had ever heard. “Then come and get me.” He was dead serious about that, and Eliot composed himself enough to nod in agreement. A determination replaced the anguish that had been staining his soul, and Quentin’s own empty chest filled with elation and some various other emotions he chose not to name. 

Or tried not to. 

Eliot was able to rise to his knees a little, and the set to his jaw and the way he still leaned into where his hand was pressed against the mirror made Quentin feel like he could just phase through the glass and wrap him in a bone-crushing hug without even trying. He didn’t know how much he missed that, missed El, until the man was there looking at him like he was the light of the world and rising to tower just a couple inches over him as he always did. Dressed to the fucking nines, too.

“I fucking love that vest.”

Eliot grinned wide, leaning in further until his forehead and a few unruly curls pressed to the mirror surface. “I know.” Of course he did. Q looked up at him and didn’t blink for fear of missing a second of it. Even though, they both knew, their time was up.

“Love you, El,” he told Eliot. Voice unwavering.

With glittering eyes, smudged in sleeplessness but clear in their sincerity, Eliot smiled the softest and most serene smile. Unpracticed and perfect. “Love you, Q.”

-

Not moments later the spell began to wither, the mirror physically melting out of the bleached wooden frame, and Eliot had to scoot back on the floor to avoid the living metal pooling on the ground among the broken mirror shards still scattered there. He didn’t move far, and couldn’t get to his feet yet; instead he sat watching the mirror melt, the last traces of shadows fading where Quentin’s face had been seconds before. He didn’t think he could get up yet, Q’s words - his voice - echoing in rounds in his head and drowning out everything else in the room. He didn’t even hear Julia approach until her hand was gently touching his shoulder.

He’d completely forgotten she was there. 

Penny was still standing by the mirror on the opposite side of the room, patiently painting his blood in the spell pattern on the reflective surface, with his back turned to them to give them privacy - or as much as he could in the quiet, sterile room. Julia’s warm brown eyes were latched onto Eliot’s face, waiting for him to come back to himself, and Eliot knew he looked worse than when he had come in. Tear tracks on his face, clothes hanging off him like he’d been in a scuffle, his slicked back hair now curling into his face. But the worst part was any emotional defense he’d had built up, any semblance that he was the poised, well-put together person who had walked in with a mission and a purpose was _gone_ . Torn down, just as he knew it would be, and all that was left was… _Eliot_. 

He couldn’t even think his own name without hearing it in Q’s voice.

Julia knelt beside him and pulled his head to her shoulder, hugging him and letting him wrap long arms around her small form. She held him as tight as he did when he hugged someone, and Eliot spent every spare ounce of will power left within him to not sob into her soft heather grey cardigan. It would be sobs of relief, he knew, and Julia would know that too - but he needed to gather himself back into some pretense of a person. They had their answer, he had his answer - and he’d gotten to say a lot more than he thought would be possible in the short time they had. Now, the real work was going to begin. 

Quentin had a quest to complete, and Eliot had a spell to find. One that would bring his depressed supernerd back to the world of the living, so he could hug him as tight as he hugged Julia on the floor next to the broken mirror frame. _Then_ they got to save the world, again. And after - 

Well, after was a whole other thing - one that he didn’t need to worry about just yet. So he wouldn’t, he couldn’t afford to. Priorities were an art, not a science; but it was an art he knew well and had excelled in for years. Once he pulled himself up off the floor, he knew he would be ready.

He had work to do.

\--

 


	6. Episode 506

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had a doozy of a month, but I've got my head tucked down and the next three chapters planned and ready. Here's to a month of writing. I still plan on having this 'season' finished before the actual Season 05 starts in January. Also I'm having a baby December 19th so I literally have a deadline xD
> 
> Notes/TW for the chapter:  
> \- Science, Math, and History OH MY. I am _such_ a nerd and it shows so much in this chapter. But I'm starting to fold all these little side stories together, like an origami flower. It'll all make sense, but man I did so much research this chapter lol  
> \- Kady and Julia are missing this chapter. I know, I'm sorry, after last chapter and them getting together some of you might be disappointed. But next chapter is like 75% set with them so I WILL make up for it I promise.  
> \- On that note, more f/f hints and stuff. This one just happened as I was writing, I don't know where it came from. I am very much not sorry about it.  
> \- BOOK REFERENCES! So many, if you see them I hope they make you smile, and if you don't you'll just think I'm insanely clever and inventive (I'm so not) but thank you Lev Grossman for making such a complex world to play with.  
> \- I am still my own beta; anything inconsistent (name spellings are the bane of my existence), spelled wrong, or using madly incorrect grammar is my fault. Very sorry.
> 
> Thank you again for your patience and dedication. I hope you enjoy this chapter, thank you for reading. <3

\--

Episode 506:

When Science is Magic and Magic is Science (But no one gets turned into a newt)

\--

_The Anti-Verse; Brakebills_

-

Quentin sat with his head rolled back onto to the weather-faded couch, familiar despite it’s deterioration. It was the one that always sat beside Eliot’s bar in the Physical Kids Cottage. Strategically placed with only a few paces between them so the upperclassman could always stand and stride with a single step for refills or a bottle on the backlit wall. Those damn long legs of his. But Eliot wasn’t there, and the couch was rough-worn and sagging, smelling of mildew and dust. Quentin kept his eyes closed, pushing out the chill and the stillness and the feather-light cinders that hung in the air from his mind, and instead focused on the sound of Bacchus rifling through bottles for a suitable substance for drinks. The clinking of glass on glass, relaxed into his spot on the couch (which literally had his butt imprinted on the broken springs and crushed velvet), and the feeling of the cottage pressing in around him let Q forget for _one second_ that he was dead - that this wasn’t really the Cottage - and that he didn’t have a looming quest threatening to smother him.

A quest he still didn’t even know how to start.

Eliza sat beside him, perched so her back wasn’t touching the monstrosity masquerading as furniture, and doing her best not to watch him out of the corner of her eye. She’d been trying to pry information from him for the past hour. Bleeding him for _anything_ that could have been helpful in his talk with Eliot - they really should have been comparing situations and not… doing whatever they’d been doing. The whole thing had boiled down to an emotional blur and Quentin was still trying to pry each moment apart to inspect it, to remember what was said and what hadn’t. But each time he tried he just remembered El’s hazel eyes, with hints of green in the dim reflection: bright with unshed tears, surrounded by dark bruises from lack of sleep. How his face had been thinner, his cheekbones cut like razors - only mildly disguised by the scruff on his cheeks and around his mouth. How fucking attractive the unkempt look was on him, despite it’s blatant display on how badly Eliot was taking care of himself. How much he had let himself go since Q had left.

Every aspect ripped at Quentin’s heart, the one that refused to beat in his chest. How could something so still hurt so much?

But he had to focus on the parts of the conversation that weren’t about them, about everything that they had wanted to say and everything that seemed too little too late. He had to not think about how, now that Eliot was working to bring him back, there was something like hope on the horizon. Hope that was just as scary and surreal as it always was, but also just as intoxicatingly enticing. No, he couldn’t think about it. He had to think about what was happening on Earth, what little he could discern from Eliot’s ramblings, and how that might help him begin his quest. There had to be parallels, connections, that had gone unmentioned. 

“I still can’t believe you didn’t even ask,” Eliza muttered under her breath for the tenth time. Quentin just groaned towards the ceiling and rubbed at his eyes until they burned in their sockets. 

“I had other things on my mind,” he ground out, but knew it was no excuse. He’d been selfish in the moment, purposefully so - he had even thought as much when it happened. He was dead, damnit! He got to be selfish about some things. It felt like a contractual right. “Eliot said he was taking care of my resurrection spell, Margo is dealing with Fillory - which is also in trouble.”

“And water is wet,” Eliza droned.

“Fair,” Q mumbled. “Kady and Julia are handling whatever is wrong on Earth, Alice is in charge of the Library, and Penny is with Mayakovsky for some fucking reason.”

“I would pay good money to see what their days look like,” Eliza smirked. Bacchus materialized to her left with a couple rounds of shots balanced between long fingers, and it looked like an impossible feat - but Quentin had given up on physics and anything making sense in the Anti-Verse. He downed a shot before the deceased god had even finished setting all the chipped shooters on the table. 

“Something to do with clocktrees,” Quentin told her around a hiss that had everything to do with whatever radioactive sludge Bacchus had managed to conjure up behind the bar. “The fuck is this?”

“Your guess is as good as mine,” Bacchus told him with a grin, shooting two glasses at once. 

“Wait, what about the clocktrees?” Eliza demanded, her attention snapping to Quentin in an instant. “You never mentioned clocktrees before. What did he say exactly?”

“Honestly, nothing,” Q admitted. “Just that we would talk about it after I was alive again and we had more time.”

“More time for _what_ ? Are they on a _clock_ ?” Eliza’s gaze narrowed to slits as she glared hard at Quentin’s ignorance. “Mighty coincidental that they are on a clock and Mayakovsky is doing something with _clocktrees_ , don’t you think?” She was doing that thing where she didn’t want to flat out tell Q he was an idiot and missed everything important ever, but he was a fucking idiot and she really wanted to throttle him. If he was picking up on a specific look for that circumstance, he probably did it too much. 

“Yeah, that’s been bugging me,” Quentin continued around the rim of his glass, attempting to save face. “How is Mayakovsky messing with clocktrees? I can’t imagine him making a trip to Fillory, or Fillory actually letting him in.”

“Without Ember and Umber there to monitor everything, I’m sure anyone could get in if they desired to,” Eliza said.

“Still, I doubt he would go.”

“Could he be helping Margo?” Eliza prompted.

Quentin just shook his head. “It sounded like Margo was on her own there, I think - well, except for Josh and Fen and Tic at the castle. I’m sure she’s fine. Eliot said Penny was with Mayakovsky, not the other way around, so they must be _at_ Brakebills South doing something with clocktrees. Not sure how that works in Antarctica,” he trailed off, his eyes were drawn together in thought as he mulled it over. Out of all of the facets that Eliot had revealed of the situation in the world of the living, the one thing that stuck out and bothered him was the fucking clocktrees. “Maybe we should check it out.”

“Go to Antarctica? No way, man - you think it’s cold here,” Bacchus shivered and shook like a dog. “Anything supposed to be standing down there’s gotta be a fucking mile under the snow.”

“No, I actually meant Fillory,” Quentin said quietly, looking to Eliza with a questioning stare. “Aren’t all clocktrees kind of connected? I always thought they might be; or I read a thread on a reddit forum that had some good ideas about them. Way more plausible than anything I ever came up with.” The clocktrees themselves had always been a mystery in the _Fillory & Further _ series lore; no real obvious purpose, but they still had this ominous importance about them that made everyone with half a brain question everything they thought they knew about the fantasy-based world. Making a mountain out of a mole hill, really - especially now that Quentin knew Eliza had made them purely for shits and giggles. But they still had to function on some kind of practical level. Right?

Tilting her head with a careful tick to the side, Eliza looked away and considered the question. “You know, I’m actually not quite certain. They _could_ be, but we’d have to inspect one. Possibly dissect it.” When she turned her luminous eyes back to Quentin they were sparked with interest and mischief. “I’m up for it.”

“Could you get us there?” Quentin asked Bacchus, and only realized after the words left his mouth the reason the god was not smiling. Fillory was where he’d been killed, where Josh had literally handed him over to The Monster to have his insides ripped out of his chest cavity. “You - You haven’t been back, have you?”

“Re-visit my literal deathbed? Nah, didn’t sound like my kind of party,” Bacchus said, disturbingly sober. “But I’m a team player and all that, so yeah I can get us there. Hey - any chance we can celebrate there? Like a birthday, but it’ll be my deathday?”

“Sure, no reason we can’t,” Quentin said quickly, finishing off a lethal shot to cover the surprise in his voice at the dead god’s abrupt change of tone. Attempting to make the best of the situation; Q could relate to that. “I bet Fillory has some weird stuff that still works when it’s dead. Gotta be better than here.” He glanced at Eliza and begged her to nod, which she did enthusiastically - only faking it for a moment before she locked eyes with Quentin again and brought his head closer to hers.

“Quentin, you absolute genius.”

“What did I do?” Quentin was actually worried, and Bacchus looked just as confused.

“If anything is still alive in this dead world, how much do you want to bet it exists in Fillory? Something that can be both living and dead?”

“Schrodinger’s cat roaming the castle forests?” Q asked sarcastically, earning him a stern reprimand from Eliza and a matching smack upside the head.

“I’m serious! Think about it. What are the chances?”

With their luck, Quentin had to give the thought pause. Their one single connection (feeble as it was) in the whole lot of information presented was probably a god or goddess planting a lead, and as tired as Quentin was of following whatever path that was, he knew he should listen to it.

“No chance you know what your parents-slash-family are planning, do you?” he asked Bacchus with a long suffering sigh. 

“Ha! If I did I’d have us skip the whole damn thing and go straight to the boss battle,” Bacchus admitted, raising his last shot and making Eliza and Quentin raise there’s. Eliza hadn’t had one sip, so far. “Let’s get this mother started.” 

Quentin could drink to that. 

-

_The Library_

-

Alice stood facing the far wall of her office; one that had once held an over-sized portrait of Everett, which she immediately took down the moment she was told the room was hers to use. It had been bare ever since. With so much going on and keeping her busy, Alice had never gotten around to finding something to do with the empty space marked by discolored wallpaper: but now she had.

Her fingers were brought up chest height and bent in perpendicular angles, some together and some not, creating a geometric pattern that feathered out and flowed as she moved seamlessly between Popper 23 and 67, then back to 41 and 6, and continued in an intricate pattern that moved the very molecules of the wall itself. Pushing far back into the space on the other side - it had been storage at one point, but honestly held more cobwebs than cataloging supplies now. Her spell rearranged the space, extended the wall and copied the layout of her own office to extend into a brand new space. Not creating anything out of what wasn’t there already, just shuffling it around. Elegantly, if she did say so herself.

When she finished with a flourish of her wrist that brought her fingertips together and back out again in a fan-like motion to seal all the newly formed walls and trimmings into place, she relaxed her stance back a step and couldn’t help but smile. She had missed practical, physical magic - it felt like her whole world at the Library had boiled down to research and compiling theories on paper. It felt great to cast again.

“Very nice,” Margo said behind her, subtly clapping her wrist as if on the sidelines of a golf-course. “Your practical magics professor would be proud, at least your technique hasn’t gone rusty.” Alice turned on her heel and gave the other woman an unimpressed look behind red-rimmed glasses. 

“Like you don’t recite Welters rules in your sleep at night,” she said glibly, gliding across the room to grab the cart piled high with books Crissy had collected. There had to be a spell keeping them from spilling onto the floor, or possibly the vintage carts were enchanted for such purposes. Alice steered it into the new space, waving her hand at the ceiling and summoning some floating lights into existence as Margo and Eliot followed her in, arms full of files and boxes. “I’ll get you a table and some chairs, and some real lamps or candles.” She looked around at the room, which had to be only about 10x12 feet and had the same ugly green on green striped wallpaper. She looked to one wall, centered her stance, and began another series of castings to build a stone fireplace. It grew like flowers blooming from the wall, made of rounded cobblestones, and the chimney veered to connect with her own inside the walls of the building. She lit it before turning back to Eliot and Margo, now bathed in the orange and gold tones of the flames. 

“You’re not just going to build those out of dust mites?” Margo asked in a dead-pan tone, one hand on her hip and watching Alice work to make the study space for them. 

“We have plenty of furniture downstairs somewhere, I’m sure. I doubt they had a spare fireplace laying around, though,” Alice bit out, already feeling on edge and knowing Margo was just reacting to her stress - she always had. She loved pressing her buttons. “I’ll get Crissy on it, and then if you have a list of other things you need you can send her off for more materials. Once she’s back.”

“You don’t hold your meetings in your office?” Margo questioned with a raised eyebrow. Alice was ditching her and Eliot for an unspecified Library matter, and honestly that was probably why she was being so catty with her in the first place, but Alice knew Zelda wouldn’t have asked to see her if it wasn’t important. Zelda knew what Alice and the other former Brakebills students were doing, and how pertinent it was that they all work together to figure out the impossible tasks before them.

But there was also the matter of all of magic being erased a few hundred miles beneath their feet, so Alice knew she needed to at least meet with the older Librarian and see what was so urgent.

“My office is honestly the only place people leave me alone,” Alice told Margo, not rising to her bait. “Which is also why I grew you a spare room instead of giving you one of the hundred thousand abandoned ones lying around here. It’ll be more secure. No one will bother you, and Crissy will be on call here once I’m done with her taking notes. I hope I’ll be back after the meeting, too, but I’m not going to hold my breath.” The more she spoke, the more apparent it became that she would _much_ rather be in the tiny study pouring through books about souls and summonings than stuck in a meeting with Zelda. Or talking to anyone in The Order. 

“Why did you take the job if you hate it so much?” Margo questioned, serious and no longer sarcastic. She watched Alice carefully, but with an air of understanding - being in charge was a taxing endeavor. 

“I don’t hate it,” Alice admitted. “It’s just frustrating. And big, there’s so many working parts. I don’t know how one person is supposed to be in charge of everything.”

“That’s what delegating is for,” Margo told her.

“I’m terrible at delegating, I don’t trust anyone to do it right - or to my standards,” Alice said. “And I trust The Order even less.” But she knew Margo was right. “I just have… _issues_ letting go.” 

“You won’t when you burn yourself out,” Margo muttered, arms crossed but slanted towards Alice in a more companionable stance than she’d been in before. “Find people you trust, there’s got to be some people here that aren’t back-stabbing douche-nozzles. Isn’t there thousands of these little Neitherland worlds floating around.”

“Yes, I just haven’t had _time_ ,” Alice stressed. “Too busy putting out fires.”

Margo nodded, and looked to Eliot who had been listening but also unloading stuff onto the ground in piles. “Go to your meeting, I can talk pointers with you later. I managed to not run my kingdom into the ground, I think you can keep this place standing for a while longer.” Alice tried to smile, grateful, but it probably looked as strained as she felt - stretched thin and trying to balance a dozen things that were way more important than the other hundred issues set at her feet. But she was grateful, and wished them luck before whisking herself out the door and through her office to fetch Crissy for her meeting. A flurry of short A-line skirts and thick heels, creating an echoing click against the floor as she strode away.

-

Zelda’s office had remained unchanged since the last time Alice had sat in it, before taking her position as head of the Library, but she knew that it was up for remodeling here in the next few weeks and would soon be boxed up until foundation spells could be completed. Zelda was already on her feet, speaking with Hughes by the fireplace and flipping through a tome that must have been bound before the Roman Empire fell. Alice hadn’t seen Hughes in a couple weeks, and smiled as he shook her hand in greeting. 

“Nice to see you in the daylight,” she mentioned, noting the soot that still clung to his olive skin and the tips of his formal Library attire. 

“Vitamin D is overrated,” he quipped back with a grin that was a little crooked, but endearing. “You ready for your world to turn upside down? We have a doozy today.”

“Joy,” Alice sighed, sidling up to the desk where books were already splayed out to particular pages and some maps were unrolled, anchored by the books. “What’s happened now?”

“We lost power in the Thaumaturgy branch,” Zelda told her with a grave face, laying the tome she held on top of the maps before Alice could decipher what they were. The giant book was actually a ledger, with more layouts and mapping inside it, indicating the lower quadrant of their separate worlds floating in space. She’d seen the information as descriptions and numbers before, but never as drawn out pictures. “And the Occultism branch has been having blackouts in several of their regions; which is usually common, since most of the buildings are haunted, but the head Librarian there - Simon - says that these are not their usual paranormal activities.”

“We think that whatever the giant glowing men were erasing is starting to have effects,” Hughes added, letting Alice flip through the ledger and draw her own conclusions from the areas that Zelda had marked with colorful post-it notes. Specifically enchanted post-it notes that would not harm the pages. Pretty much everything at the Library had spells, enchantments, and insane layers of checks and balances in place to prevent any damage coming to the books. 

“So we’re running out of time,” Alice mumbled, fingertips grazing over the drawings and letting her mind multitask the problem presented with the new information before her. “Do all the branches appear like this?” Each branch of the Library was on its on little world, which was why it took forever and fucking day to get anything transferred between branches. They literally had to be sent off world, after the branch managed to find the materials in the first place. But Alice had no idea the worlds were shaped in this circular, cherrio-like pattern. She’d kind of pictured spheres all clustered together like a constellation of stars, or possibly that they orbited a singular sun like a solar system - it had been one of her prevailing theories on where exactly the world of the old gods actually existed. At the center of it all. It only made sense that the ethereal realm would have some correlation to the Library: the most influential collection of power and information in all existence. But apparently, that wasn’t the case. She flipped through the book to see the overall formation of branches all hovering together in space, and noted they looked more like an armada of colorful donuts. 

Or, disturbingly, like what one would see under a microscope when inspecting red blood cells. 

The similarity had goosebumps rise on her skin, a shiver threatening to course through her at the realization. But she couldn’t shake the slight tremor to her fingers, or the burning deep in her bones that this comparison was _important_. So very, very important. 

“The shape of the worlds? Yes, it’s the most stable structure,” Zelda told her matter-of-factly. “They were formed organically, not by design.”

“It was by someone’s design,” Alice pointed out. 

“Who’s?” Crissy asked behind her, having paused in her notes with her hand hovering over the notebook she always carried. She was looking hauntingly at the pictures, too, and if she hadn’t made the same connection Alice did she would have to make sure the intern made note of it. Have her start pulling research materials as soon as they got back.

“I’ve been doing a lot of research into the Library origins and any reining theories on the Old Gods,” Alice told them, straightening up and keeping the book open to the zoomed out map of their Library branches all drawn in intricate sketches. “I think one of them had a hand in the Library itself, but also in the worlds it’s built on - someone drew the original coding and lineament in the foundations. They mean something. I think they have to do with magic and what distributes it to all the worlds. I thought it was all technical, and I’d been looking into computer sciences and everything I could about circuit boards - but that’s only one part of it.”

“I’m not following,” Hughes said, unashamed. 

“The branches,” Alice pointed to the mapping.

“They’re donuts.”

“They’re cells,” Alice insisted. “They look like red blood cells. They are built with foundations of coding, but they look biological - they formed organically.” She said this to Zelda, who was looking perplexed but like the dots were connecting in ways she hadn’t considered before. “I need to be looking into biotechnology, and probably biological engineering.”

“But those are modern inventions,” Hughes insisted. “There’s no way the most ancient beings of creation used a combination of computer science and biological chemistry to create what we’re standing on. It’s advanced in a perverse way, a lot of realms still think the two components shouldn’t mix. That it’s unnatural.”

“Unless they are,” Alice defended. “Natural, I mean. What if civilizations just think it’s unnatural because they couldn’t understand it. It wouldn’t be the first time in history. Or the first time that magic has been comparable to science. In a way, magic is a science; a dangerous and life-altering science. But so is nuclear studies.” 

“So what are you trying to say here?” Zelda pressed, driving the conversation away from an argument and back on task.

“That I’ve been looking at this the wrong way. What if the Neitherlands isn’t just a cluster of planets but a living thing. If I look at it as an actual collection of cells,” Alice pointed to the pictures of the donut-shaped planets, “then we need to think to what a cell consists of. The basic mechanics of it. What if, by erasing the coding at it’s foundations, it is like the gods are rearranging the DNA of the cells? Changing them into something else entirely, or they could even be infecting them. We need to look into both technical and biological components. But even if we manage to understand it all - I’m not sure what we can even do about it.” She looked to Zelda again, feeling the largeness of the whole situation expand around her. This was so big, what the hell were they supposed to do?

“We can’t exactly rewrite the DNA of our planet,” Hughes said off-handedly, agreeing. 

“If that’s even what’s happening here. We might not have time for the amount of research that is required,” Zelda added, huffing a sigh and shifting her fingers nervously as they stayed lightly raised by her shoulders. “So, we must appeal to someone who can tell us the situation exactly - and what we can do about it.”

“Appeal? Like to a god?” Alice said with a wrinkle to her nose, already feeling her teeth start to bare at the idea. She hated the thought of dealing with the divine more than she already had.

“Of a sorts, we have a few to choose from. Deities of history, writing, a few of Libraries - although those are rare.” Zelda said it all so off-handed, for all Alice knew she had the gods of history on speed dial. 

“You’ve done this before?”

“...No, but it is the straightest path to finding what we need,” Zelda pointed out. “And to find someone powerful enough to help, or buy us some time. If you’re right about this, we don’t have many other options.” She spread her hands a bit in a gesture of abdication, and Alice was loathe to agree with her.

But really, what other choice did they have? If magic was being erased, and was already affecting the Library branches, it was only a matter of time before it started to affect Earth. And Fillory. 

If they lost magic before they were able to resurrect Q, she didn’t know what they would do.

-

_Brakebills South_

-

One morning Penny woke up with the perpetual Antarctic dark outside his window, ‘9-5’ by Dolly Parton stuck in his head for some unknown fucking reason, and found himself wondering how the actual _fuck_ he’d turned into someone’s bitch.

Or two people’s, because somehow his days were now full with doing both Margo and Mayakovsky’s bidding - and Margo wasn’t even on the planet anymore. 

Mayakovsky had gone full-tilt apocalypse preparation mode. He ditched his three decade long dissertation on world-building spells (which he insisted had nothing to do with Margo telling him he wasn’t allowed to anymore or she’d sick Alice and the Library on him) to store every square ounce of magic he possibly could in his illegal living-metal batteries. Now that he could leave Brakebills South and acquire the material himself without seducing Brakebills professors on the side - that was still both baffling and sickening in and of itself to Penny - he had an abundance to work with and stock-pile. As well as an insane collection of magical objects that needed to be broken down for energy. 

Apparently, Mayakovsky had convinced Penny’s timeline 40 counterpart to help with the first round of batteries, and the old man was absolutely tickled pink that Penny of 23 was there to help him yet again. Penny was not as amused, told him to go fuck himself half the time, and yet still found himself shattering antique mirrors and grinding literal stone into gravel to release the magic soaked within each artificat. Or untangling a ball of yarn as old as England and as big as an armchair, that may or may not have also been stained with germs from the black plague. 

Meanwhile, both Penny and Dean Fogg were also still working on the clocktrees for Margo. Mayakovsky might have tossed all that work aside for the time being, (Fogg was convinced that he was still reading their notes and doing mental calculations so he could jump back in when he stopped panicking about magic disappearing altogether), but that didn’t mean they were allowed to stop exploring what the spells looked like when they were cast. Spoilers: every single spell Mayakovsky had compiled in his project grew into a binary clocktree. 

Each one was different; with specific alterations in height, trunk width, number of branches, or even the species of tree. Some were more weathered looking than others, a few bore scars from lightning or knife carvings, and some were definitely older than others. They had to resemble real trees, Penny was sure of it; probably in Fillory growing and soaking up sun as he stood freezing his ass off at Brakebills South. A portrait of an actual living thing worlds away, built from numbers printed on paper. But as much as the differences stacked up, and continued inward to the mechanical workings of the clocks grown into the trees - from the metal shapes and layouts to the different types of numerical systems laid out on the clock faces - one single thing remained identical in every clocktree.

The clocks were all broken.

Shattered faces, spinning dials, stalled mechanics, incorrect interval measurements; the list went on and on. Penny only knew a little of what he’d skimmed on horomancy back in an alternate timeline with Marina to understand that they were broken, to pin-point certain sections that were gummed up or outright cracked and in pieces. The Turing Machine papers were thin enough he could layer them and hold them up to the light to see the 3D images of the inside of the trees, and with every equation they ran and printed the results were all the same. 

By the end of the month he had a literal forest growing within the student study rooms, each mapped and precise, with different colored notes written all over the place and Dean Fogg cataloging what he could. Among the trees of printed ink and thin paper sheets Penny had stumbled upon an epidemic and a magical breakthrough all in one - and even though he felt a small sense of pride at the sheer amount of work he’d done in such a short time period, he also couldn’t help remembering that the data packets and notes and conclusions he was writing up were all going to be brought up to Margo in a box. Fogg reminded him about ten times a day that it was a teamwork thing and not a doing-Margo’s-bidding thing, but the fact it needed to be repeated probably said something.

Or he was projecting. Because Mayakovsky hadn’t lifted a finger in three weeks but still shouted for assistance every couple of hours for his own work. The floating iron spheres that were his batteries now resided in every corner of the halls and rooms they occupied, inhaling the excess magic they used daily. Penny had a gut feeling it was fucking with his flow. Magic itself was something that used each Magician like a current, coursed through them and back out again like trees used carbon monoxide to create oxygen. Mayakovsky’s batteries used this filtered version of magic that had already been captured and used by Magicians and other magical entities, because when stored together some kind of reaction occurred within the living metal to make it just as usable once more. Magical recycling. It would be impressive and note-worthy if it hadn’t been created purely because Mayakovsky was a selfish, paranoid bastard - which was the same story for the numerical clocktree discovery. And to be honest, it kind of pissed Penny off. 

“Honestly, you just need to let it go and ignore him,” Fogg said in his same even tone he spoke about everything, all the while making notations on a very expensive looking clipboard/notepad contraption Penny eyed with jealousy. It had come from seemingly nowhere about three weeks prior when their whole endeavor started. Since when had he become envious of office supplies? How was this his life? “Mischa has always been the same. He is brilliant, and his ideas would do wonders for the world. But he is stubborn and stuck in his ways. Holding out hope he will change his mind one day is a futile effort.”

“You _really_ don’t think much of him,” Penny mumbled as he copied down numbers indicating locations on an old live oak that had a shattered clock face in roman numerals. He had created grid patterns to help them discern where the problems lay in each tree; knowing for a fact that Margo would ask about exact locations, and if these _were_ real clocktrees in Fillory then maybe he could pinpoint exactly what she needed to fix in each tree. She had said that she was supposed to fix _all_ the clocktrees, and if there wasn’t some single magical wand waving bullshit that could fix all of them at once - this could be a very long and tedious maintenance job for her. 

“On the contrary,” Fogg said to his comment, “I think very highly of him. He is one of the best Magicians of our time, it is his personal choices that I don’t think much of. Mischa knows this, and he would be the first to question your moral stability if you did not dislike them as well.”

“That’s just sad,” Penny mumbled, no real emotion behind the phrase so it came out with more spite than he meant it to. Fogg seemed to understand him anyway.

“Give him time, he’ll come around - probably. Or he won’t, and we’ll keep progressing. You have covered a lot of ground in the past few months,” Fogg changed tangents by segueing into a compliment, and Penny could only huff out a frustrated breath.

“You know you say a lot of contradicting shit that leads to absolutely nothing, right?”

“And yet, it inspires,” Fogg said as if it baffled him as well. “Or so I’ve been told.”

“Yeah, yeah, save your imposter syndrome shit for another time. I want to try and get this box to Margo sometime tomorrow,” Penny told him, shuffling through the papers on his lap as he skimmed the notes he’d been making. “She should get started on these horomancy fixes asap, and on finding ways to find the damn trees.”

“She should also be looking into reasons why each tree correlates to each spell,” Fogg pointed out, indicating his own notes. “It could be helpful, or important.”

“But not both?” Penny made a face.

“There are many things in life that are important but not at all helpful,” Fogg dead-panned. “You should know that better than me.”

Penny didn’t even get to nod before he froze, squinting at the lines of code in front of him. He swore he could now read the ones and zeros like he was in _The Matrix_ , and either he was finally loosing it - or there was a fucking letter hidden in the code. 

“What the fuck?”

As soon as he thought he saw it, he lost it, which made _no sense_ whatso-fucking-ever, and Penny snatched the paper so quick it ripped off the wall, trailing down to the floor in a ribbon curve that spooled where he sat cross-legged on the ground. 

“What is it?” Fogg asked but Penny just shushed him loud and rudely, going line by line and not finding anything. It was ink on paper, it’s not like it was moving.

“Goddamnit, I’m losing it,” Penny grumbled through gritted teeth. “I thought I saw something.”

“Like what?”

“Like not a damn number. I swore I saw the letter E.”

Fogg was quiet. “Can a Turing Machine type a letter? Or a different number? Perhaps it was a three?” 

“The whole thing is Linear Base Binary, there is no three,” Penny answered snappishly, and hunched over to scan the paper for a fourth time. Just in case. 

“Well, mark it and come back to it,” Fogg mentioned, but Penny was determined. He knew what he saw.

If there was another curve-ball in this fucking ball game he wanted to get on it, preferably before he brought any more information to Margo. He hoped she had made some progress so far, or had managed to help Eliot out at least a little bit in the little time that had lapsed in The Library, because the amount of data she was going to have to wade through was going to make her head spin. 

And Penny wasn’t even close to done with his own work. Not by a long shot.

-

_The Library_

-

On a very old and weathered notebook, written in Margo’s tight, half-cursive scrawl, was the Seeing Hare’s message. Ominous and stark in the yellowed lamplight of the work space she and Eliot occupied, and Margo eyed it with a stare of contempt and contemplation. 

She had cast a memory charm on herself to show the Kind Wolf’s final moments with her on a loop in her mind’s eye; reliving the conversation over and over until she had every word in front of her. Most of it was on a laptop screen, a blinking cursor taunting her at the end of her transcript of the exchange, as she tapped a pen on the notebook that had the bare-bones of the message down. For perspective. Margo had always liked to have two separate material sources in front of her: the actual source in it’s unaltered form, and again with her own thoughts on it. So she was able to discern the difference between her own guesswork and incantations and what it had all started out as. Her mind ran a million miles a minute, and tended to jump a good number of steps in a typical thought process.

 _Do not fear the new path._  
 _When you return, the ones you seek will be waiting for you._ _  
_Look to the clocktrees, they are the door.

The Kind Wolf had already told her the _don’t fear the new path_ part probably meant this tangent she was currently on, helping bring Q back from the dead before she went and did the same for Fen and Josh. Which was where she was pretty sure the phrase _the ones you seek will be waiting for you_ came into play. Unless it meant she had other things to seek that would be waiting in future Fillory and Fen and Josh were just out by the wayside, twiddling their thumbs as she figured shit out. 

Clocktrees being the door was pretty damn clear. The clocktrees being broken was _also_ pretty damn clear, so there was no confusion there. The Kind Wolf had mentioned that once they were fixed, she could save her friends. _Time will be merely a hand on the clock, easily winded forward or back_. She stared at those words on the backlit screen of her googledocs with a hard eye, her first instinct written in a side comment box that was glaringly yellow to make sure to capture her attention. If the Kind Wolf meant what she thought he meant, then there was the chance of turning back time entirely - all the way to the battle in front of Whitespire. She could stop Plover from taking over the kingdom in the first place, whip everyone’s asses into shape before the battle got out of hand. Take back her throne. And as enticing as all that was, there was also the small fact that it would undo 300 years of history and lives in an instant. 

The whole thing was aggravatingly complex and she preferred to spend her time helping Eliot with his search. But that well was even deeper and more intricate than her own. 

Across from her  - with his head in one hand, dark curls spilling over the long fingers in unruly strands that told long tales of aggravation, and the other hand doing his telekinetic thing where a pen spun between his fingers like a haunted windmill - was a very, acutely, frustrated Eliot. The amount of reading he had done alone, along with how flustered he was getting the further along he dove into the Library’s dusty archives, would have been almost cute under any other circumstances. Eliot had perfected the art of skimming pages and contents of books, could mutter spells under his breath and through gritted teeth that would search the books for him (as long as they weren’t protected against enchantments) _by heart_ and without even glancing at his cheat sheet next to him, and he had single-handedly emptied an entire cartful of materials in however long it had been since they locked themselves in that room. Hours, Margo was sure. She’d dozed off at one point and woken to Eliot still pouring through page after page like it was all he could do to keep breathing.

“We should call it a night,” Margo told him, careful to keep the words controlled and not so loud in the secluded space. The only sound was the crackling of the fire beside them and Eliot turning pages of a book that apparently hadn’t wanted to be magically coaxed to show him it’s contents. “Or a morning, I’m pretty sure it’s been two weeks on Earth at this point. At least.”

“I’m fine,” Eliot muttered, flipping three pages in succession before his eyes snatched onto a new passage and began skimming once more. “You go lay down, I’ll trade you later.” She didn’t believe him for a second, but decided not to argue. She knew a spell that would knock him out if he refused. 

“You find anything useful?” Margo asked, dropping her own pen and stretching her arms above her head, cracking the stiff knuckles with a satisfying serious of pops. 

“Just a lot of reach around, circle-jerk, bullshit that tells me nothing and hints at _something_ all that the same time,” Eliot ground out, leaning back in his chair and running his hands through his hair for the millionth time, shredding the curls once more and making the man looking increasingly more deranged by the second. 

“Ground-breaking,” Margo dead-panned. “Care to elaborate?”

“If I read the word _seance_ one more time I think my eyes will literally begin to bleed,” Eliot moaned, rubbing at his eyes harshly as if to stave off the prediction. “Summoning a soul is temporary, but if there’s a way to trap it here we can hold on to it long enough to get Q to his new body in Fillory. But summoning a soul _in_ Fillory is fucking impossible. Apparently Ember had a fucking bug up his ass about zombies or something so they stone-walled the entire realm when they made it.”

“So you have to summon the soul on Earth, or here.”

“Here is easier, since the Library branches are fucking connected - or at least you would _think_ so. No one’s done it so there’s no how-to manual written anywhere,” Eliot gestured to the books in front of him. “I get to do that too, after I stop hitting all these goddamn rules and regulations that prevent anything I come up with from gaining any traction. I don’t know how to get him, I don’t know how to show him how to find a door to the Underworld Library branch, I don’t know how to get his soul from the Underworld branch to this branch, or how to keep him here. I don’t know how to transfer him to Fillory, and I _still_ don’t know what to give the fucking giant-ass spider to trade for Q’s bones.” He leaned so far back as he said all this his head was tilted past the ceiling and the heels of his palms were pressed deep into his eyesockets. “I don’t know how long it’ll take the witch to finish the damn spell, or if the spell will make the body. I don’t know if Quentin’s soul will stay when we try to bind them.” His voice got quieter as he kept listing everything. “I don’t know anything. I don’t know what I’m doing.”

Margo watched him go silent, his body completely still for the first time in hours, balanced precariously on the back two legs of the chair he sat in. With a careful turn of her head, tilting it to one side, she allowed her Fairy eye a full view and saw the pulsating red and orange mist surrounding Eliot, his telekinetic powers leaking from every pore and affecting the room and his body like a balm. A self-soothing technique that the other probably hadn't even realized was in effect. If she let him keep venting like this then the table and both chairs would soon be hovering about a foot off the floor. 

“El, come back down,” Margo said in a calm and soothing tone she hadn't thought she was still capable of, her fresh remembrances of the Kind Wolf kicking in and taking effect. It had been a long time since she’d seen Eliot so worked up that his magic started to escape his carefully-bound constraint. Eliot had always had a tight hold on his telekinesis, stemming more from his past than his present, but she knew he hated when it slipped his control. With a sigh that shuddered in his chest, she watched him lower himself further until the back of the chair hit the floor and he remained elegantly perched with his ankles crossed over the front legs - refusing to move an inch. She snorted at his dramatic antics, but felt better for them and stood from her own chair. “Not what I meant.”

“Life feels so much more natural this way,” Eliot said in an airy tone, droll and dispassionate. He finally removed his hands from his eyes, dragging them down his face and watched Margo approach where he lay on the floor. “Maybe I’ll find the answer down here.”

“Up my skirt? Unlikely,” Margo snarked, crouching down to kneel beside him. “But you wouldn’t be the first to suggest it.”

Eliot grimaced a smile and let his fingertips trace his hairline as if fighting off a headache - he probably was. But he asked in a more serious tone, “Any progress on your end?” He knew she had taken a break from the Quentin Rescue Plan to try and map out her own rescue mission for Fen and Josh, but neither were completely sure how much time had passed since they split prerogatives. 

“Just an ass load of bullet points, same as you,” Margo said with her chin in her hand, dark eyes conveying Eliot’s dramatics were only partially his own fault. For all his rantings, he at least had a very specific checklist of what he was searching for - that was better than no direction at all. “I’m going to magic your greek tragedy speech onto a piece of paper so you can start working at it one step at a time. After you sleep.” Eliot rolled his head against the headrest on the floor and opened his mouth to protest but Margo shushed him with a single polished finger against his mouth. “Say you’re fine, I dare you.” Her stare alone was enough to remind Eliot he was literally lying on the floor. He was not fine.

“I don’t think I can sleep,” he said around her fingertip, not caring in the slightest it muffled his words. 

“You say that like we didn’t spend the entirety of our second semester creating potions meant for this day,” Margo scolded with a small smile, and stood to tower over Eliot’s lounging form. “Get up El, time for bed.”

“I don’t wanna,” he whined petulantly, but excepted Margo’s hand to help bring him to his feet. He wobbled a bit, as his torso was still considerably lighter than his head and everything below his waist. “That’s unpleasant.”

“Jesus Christ, you're like one of those standing Socker Boppers,” Margo eyed him as Eliot tried to regain his balance. But Eliot just waved her off and steadied himself on the table-side.

“Be a dear and magic that list for me would you?” Eliot darted back. “I’m going to focus on keeping that pizza in my stomach.” Margo did a quick incantation and a sweep of her hand over a notebook page without even looking at it, then placed a hand on Eliot’s back while the words wrote themselves on the page. “I’m good,” Eliot told her, not smiling but not entirely lying either.

“I know,” Margo said plainly, wrapping her arm around his waist and hooking a finger through a belt loop so she could anchor herself to Eliot’s side, forcing the other man to look down at her under his arm. “You do know what you’re doing, El. Shit’s all going to work out, somehow. It always does. Once you have a solid plan you’ll stop panicking, and knowing you it’ll come to you right before you fall asleep. We’ve done crazier shit before, and dealt with a lot worse situations and fuck-all to work with.”

“Worse?” Eliot inquired with a lazily raised eyebrow, allowing himself to be steered out of the study and across Alice’s office to her bedroom. Which was apparently being rented out to anyone who had a need for it. “Name one.”

“I’ll make you another list.”

-

_The Anti-Verse; Brakebills_

-

Getting to Fillory was a journey in and of itself. Bacchus didn’t have his god-level powers intact, which explained a lot of why the deceased god had been acting like a more subdued version of himself since Quentin had seen him. He seemed more - human, almost. It wasn’t until Q and Eliza followed him into the surrounding woods of Brakebills once more that the realization hit Quentin like a punch to the face; Bacchus _had_ been human. Once. Or close to human. All of the gods and goddesses that had taken a piece of the Monster-Sister had been a Librarian, eons ago. Quentin even considered asking Bacchus about it, questioning if he remembered anything - or why he still referred to the Old Gods as ‘his parents’. Quentin remembered that conversation from a wild loft party in both vivid quotations and blurred motions. A complicated mix that was yet another side effect of being dead; he remembered everything, even if his mortal body hadn’t been entirely sober for it.

Which in turn led to _other_ nights he hadn’t remembered as vividly in the real world as he had in the afterlife, and one night in particular at the Physical Kids Cottage with a very drunk Elliot and very (uncharacteristically) vulnerable Margo. He shook his head and attempted to keep his face neutral as he dismissed the memories threatening to make themselves known in brilliant technicolor. Thank fucking God he didn’t have a heart beat, because his face would have been red as a lobster and now was not the time.

_Elliot had been so handsy._

“Still with us?” Eliza asked, her clear British accent cutting through the fog and jerking Quentin back to reality. He looked at her quickly in reaction, guilty as sin, but Eliza just smiled her knowing smile at him. “The Memory Cloud caught you, didn’t it?” Quentin could only nod dumbly, not trusting his tongue to form words when he’d just had a hallucinatory level flashback of Eliot’s curling around it inside his mouth. “When you’re outside of your final destination, it tends to creep in and take over your thoughts at the slightest hint of a memory. It’ll blind you, and you won’t realize it until you’re walking off a cliff, so be careful.”

“I’ll try,” Quentin mumbled, not feeling particularly confident that he could manage that feat. “Thanks.”

“At least you only have a couple decades,” Bacchus said from ahead of them. “I have a fuck ton of millennia to sift through, can be some bullshit that lasts for-fucking-ever if I get lost in a party. I fucking miss parties,” he whined petulantly, and went on a poetic waxing of drugs and sex and magic and alcohol that stayed in liquid forms instead of sludge. Eliza and Quentin exchanged amused glances and let the god talk himself out as they approached the river at the edge of the Brakebills campus grounds. 

He fought off another wave of memories once he began to recognize his surroundings; these dating back to his first couple weeks at Brakebills, when he’d seen the river for the first time and learned all about the wards and spells surrounding the school. In particular, the weather charms that were so old and outdated that they reflected the wrong weather of the actual month in the non-magical world. Eliot, who stayed at the school year round instead of returning to the Midwest, had hidden a rowboat on the shore that was enchanted to survive the wards. They had spent more than one occasion in the summer-like weather of the Brakebills campus, Eliot stretched out in the bottom of the boat as it drifted downstream, and Quentin sitting beside him with a book in his lap. For no other purpose than to experience the seamless change as the boat passed the barrier into waters that were ice-cold, where snow threatened to flutter from the grey overcast sky, and bitter winter winds nipped at their nose and cheeks. They’d spent hours talking in that little boat.

“Where is that fucking boat,” Bacchus muttered, and Quentin caught himself before he did indeed walk right off the ravine face to tumble down into the grey river below. For a single, heart-stopping moment Quentin had thought Bacchus had known what he was thinking about. The Memory Cloud had caught him in it’s web again, and Q did his best to forcibly focus on the present and not the past. 

If he kept spending all his time thinking about Eliot, he wouldn’t be able to make it out of the Anti-Verse at all - and then he’d never see him again. Sober the fuck up, Coldwater. 

“It should be just down the shore,” Quentin said aloud, pointing North of them. “See that tall pine? I’m pretty sure that’s the marker.”

Bacchus narrowed his eyes at him suspiciously. “How do you know about the boat?”

“Or that it’s the same one,” Eliza said placatingly, giving Quentin a look like she was trying to decipher if he was still with them or lost in a memory.

“It’s the only one down here, the whole river is enchanted and students aren’t allowed on it,” Quentin told them. “And - it belongs to a friend of mine, on the other side.” The other two didn’t question him again, but Eliza’s sharp gaze watched him even more closely than before. He had to wonder again if some dead souls could see other soul’s memories, then prayed that they couldn’t. His mind was darting between things that broke his heart, and things that would make it beat faster if it beat at all. Stupidly faster. 

They found the boat tucked under the dead pine tree, just as Quentin remembered it, and Bacchus lept in across the tattered wooden boards like he’d done it a million times. He probably had, since he’d died. “Come aboard, let’s get cracking. I need a drink and Fillory is closest.”

“How is this getting us to Fillory?” Quentin questioned out loud, but still stepped into the boat carefully, fully aware of how much the boards creaked and protested under his weight as he shifted to a sturdier section. With the amount of rotten holes and splintered sections completely missing from the boat, it should have been half full of water or at the bottom of the creek bed, but it was ominously dry - defying physics and logic once more. Q wasn’t sure if he was ever going to be able to wrap his head around the concept of the Anti-Verse at all. His only reigning theory that made any sense at all was that it was a complete copy of the real world, in every sense of the term, so the objects and buildings that were there _needed_ to remain there. But because everything was dead and decaying some things shouldn’t still be where they stood - top floors of buildings, the towers of Brakebills, bridges and boats. But for the necessity of polarity, they remained, magically afloat on the water or in the air. 

He couldn’t imagine what Fillory would be like.

“It’s a dead river. You ever seen a dead river?” Bacchus said snidely. “No, because it’s an impossible thing. Most of the rivers in this universe are dried up - as they should be - but this one stays flowing and filled with magic. It’s the only juice I get that’ll be anything close to my old powers.”

“Why don’t you just drink it then?” Quentin asked, eyeing the dirty grey water below them as he sat in the boat, knees brought up to his chest so he stayed perched on his seat, not daring to let his feet touch the bottom. He wasn’t sure if his shoes would just go through the open spaces or not, and if that could make the boat sink. 

“Because I don’t want to test if I get a second death or not.”

“We can’t see beneath the surface,” Eliza pointed out mildly, also peering over the edge as Bacchus pushed them off the rocks and into the vast emptiness of the slow moving river. Covered in a thin mist that came from nowhere, and silence so pressing and heavy it caged their voices in the space around them. “Anything could be down there. It’s best not to press our luck.”

Quentin nodded then stopped mid-motion, his eyes going wide. “Holy shit - dragons.”

“What?” Eliza questioned.

“Dragons, dragons live in rivers. And they travel between the living world and the dead one - they’re gateways to the underworld. Julia and I used one to get her shade back,” Quentin explained as fast as he could. “So if there’s dragons here then they would be something living - maybe that’s the answer to finding the key?”

But Bacchus was shaking his head. “No dragons here, if there were you think I’d be hanging out with Iris and my brothers? Dragons know how to have a good fucking time.”

“They do travel to the underworld, but I don’t think this is part of the underworld,” Eliza said, looking to Quentin conversationally to mask her apologetic expression. “The Anti-Verse seems to be a realm all its own, completely separate, with its own rules. A lot of them have been driving my bonkers since we arrived.”

“I never thought I’d miss physics,” Quentin agreed, but was deflated about his idea being shot down. He thought he’d stumbled onto something. “Do you think there’s a dead dragon down there?” He looked out across the water, and down again to try and see further than a foot. With no luck.

“It could be what makes this river so magical,” Eliza said solemnly. “But I sincerely hope there isn’t one. Let’s not touch the water, just in case.”

“Give me two more shakes and we won’t even be here,” Bacchus said loudly, his voice echoing over the open spaces. Against Eliza’s previous statement, he’d wetted his hands in the oil-spill like substance and had them raised by his sides as he closed his eyes and stood up in the boat. Gods don’t cast like Magicians do, they never had the need - they just think what they wanted and it becomes so. So Q wasn’t quite sure how it was all going to work - 

-

In the time it took Quentin to blink, the sky changed.

The boat was no longer on water, it had ridden ashore as smoothly as if a wave had pushed them there, but there was also no water to be seen. The creek bed surrounding them was deep and jagged, and Quentin felt he might have even recognized it - but was too distracted by the array of subdued colors surrounding them.

Everything on Earth had been grey, or white, or black as pitch. Dead, decayed, or shattered. But in Fillory, where he knew he was with all his heart, it was more like a swamp bed. Everything was in the process of decaying, color still splashed the rocks and mud and trees, although nothing breathed or moved in any direction. In comparison to Anti-Verse Earth, Anti-Verse Fillory was a rainbow. Everything was still muted, he knew this, but the colors that caught his eye seemed glaringly vivid. The air smelled, actually smelled of something - sweet rot, possibly - and the assault on his nose near knocked Q on his ass. 

Something here was alive. He could feel it. 

Eliza’s eyes were alight as she took in everything around them, standing up and watching the silent trees, the mucked up ravine, as if something was about to appear and tell them what the hell was going on. Maybe, somewhere in her childish heart that would always adore Fillory more than it deserved, she thought there would be. But nothing appeared, no one came to show them the way, and Bacchus was the first to step out of Eliot’s boat onto Fillorian soil. Dead Fillorian soil. Quentin had to remind himself everything here was dead, and the second he caught a hint of something otherwise - he needed to chase it like a madman. 

-

_The Library_

-

An empty office on an obscure level Alice couldn’t quite remember the name or number of was where she found herself an hour after she’d agreed to appeal to a god. Again. She stood forming the Southern-most point in the circle of Librarians, all surrounding a complicated chalk diagram drawn on the polished wood floor, with ancient ceramic bowls filled with sage and amber and some other ingredients Zelda hadn’t named when she placed them primly on each point of a ten-point star. It wasn’t a summoning spell Alice was familiar with, and from the array of different items laid out on the desk pushed against the wall, she had a feeling it was a blanket summoning. One that could have it’s components switched out to call to different gods; the whole thing felt really impersonal and a little insulting. She didn’t have a lot of faith in them finding anything useful from the deities Zelda had lined up. 

Beside her and covering the East was Sheila, who had been more than happy to help when Zelda paged for her; she was always a pleasure to have around, for Alice. The woman had come leaps and bounds in her magical studies, and her well-centered nature was wonderfully grounding. On her other side was Hughes, who had been roped into helping merely for the sake of having a full circle - and he knew it. But he was in the same mindset as Alice when it came to getting any pertinent information from the gods and goddesses of history and literature. Why in the world would they help them? They lived and worked in a library, in _The Library_ , that housed all known information in the universe. Asking for help from the divine just seemed - lazy. 

But they were short on time, which just made them seem incompetent _and_ lazy. This probably wasn’t going to go over well.

Zelda cleared her throat to get their attention, and brought her already raised hands towards her center, folding them into the beginning of the casting. Everyone else followed suit, including Alice (although she’d rather be anywhere else in the entire universe), and they started to call upon their first deity: Clio, the Greek Muse of History. 

She wasn’t going to be happy to be separated from her other eight sister Muses, but she also was the most likely to help them. In that she’d be the nicest about it. She would be able to point them in the right direction when it came to the other deities on their list: which ones would be more amicable, and which they shouldn’t even bother with. 

The incantation wasn’t complicated, but it was long and tedious, and Alice mentally corrected both Sheila and Hughes’ Ancient Greek in her head the entire time - attempting to speak a little louder than they were so her words and Zelda’s rang the clearest in the summoning. But it seemed she didn’t need to try too hard. A bright burst of light appeared like a star in the night sky in the center of the room, and from it’s swirling winds a beautiful woman draped in sheer white cloth stood to her full height. She didn’t look confused, or annoyed, and Alice counted that as a plus.

Long ago Alice had seen a statue of Clio in a courtyard in Berlin, dazed and spellbound at ten years old at the proud woman swathed in only a sheet but with the concentration of all knowledge laid into the lines of her face. The ethereal being that stood in front of her more than lived up to that memory. Her timeless face a smooth olive tone that brought life to her perfect shape, and dark eyes a deep pool so filled and glimmered with knowledge Alice thought she could see entire universes inside the black abyss where her irises should have been. She had a scroll tucked under her arm, the ink still fresh and staining the see-through silk pooled around her waist, and her penetrating gaze landed on Alice more than once as it swept the room. 

 _“So much history, here,_ ” Clio said wistfully, as if to herself, and Alice finally understood that as the Muse looked around the room she was actually looking _through_ the walls. “ _Layers upon layers of it, hundreds of thousands of voices over hundreds of thousands of years. I cannot imagine what you might need me for.”_ She said the last of this directly to Zelda, who had stepped forward to toe the line of the white outermost circle of the summoning, but hadn’t gotten further than opening her mouth to begin to speak. Alice was the one that felt the Muse’s words in her gut, twisted into shame and guilt as she did nothing but stare at the object beauty and intensity of the creature in the room. The muses were designed this way to inspire, to capture attention and then bestow their power upon the viewer who might not have listened at first glance. She couldn’t believe how fully and impossibly the method worked on mortals, even her. 

“We respectfully ask for your assistance, oh great Muse of History,” Zelda began, but by the blank look Clio directed at her - she wasn’t impressed by Zelda’s appeal. Still, the woman was nothing if not persistent. “We have a situation here at our Library, with the magic that keeps it running, and we need help deciphering what is wrong and how to fix it.”

 _“I cannot help you_ ,” Clio told her, in Ancient Greek, and Alice wasn’t sure if she meant because she couldn’t understand Zelda in English or if she meant at all. Alice wanted to assume that Clio spoke Ancient Greek because she wanted to, because it was her native tongue, but that she knew all languages. To be truly a Muse and scholar of History, it seemed only natural that she would be well versed in every tongue. 

 _“Please_ ,” Alice said, also in Ancient Greek, stepping forward towards the Muse and not understanding why her throat was so dry. Why she was so nervous beneath the stare of this woman who towered over her and shone from the inside out with a light that Alice had always imagined the metaphors of knowledge referred to. _“We know this isn’t your domain, but the boundless amount of information you have inside you must extend to other mythologies, or possibly back to our beginnings here at the Library.”_ Alice blinked behind her glasses and licked her parched lips, suddenly dying of thirst when she’d been practically drooling onto the front of her dress moments before. Her insides squirmed as the Muse watched her, but her expression was vastly different from what it had been when Zelda spoke; Clio looked amused, interested, charmed in the most quiet and alluring way - and Alice knew her cheeks were flushed bright red under those luminous star-filled eyes. Everything she said sounded vulgar, profane and she couldn’t help but trip over her own tongue.

Why the fuck did she keep thinking about _tongues_ , and why did she feel so hot?

 _“What is it - exactly - that you seek, young maiden?_ ” Clio asked, her words filled with a new warmth as she looked deep beneath Alice’s skin and tugged at her very essence. A rush of determination and need to step closer surged through her, and Alice almost crossed the chalk lines into the summoning circle but Sheila reached out to stop her before she could. The solid hand on her shoulder shocked Alice worse than stepping out naked into a snowstorm - which she had done before - and why was she thinking about being naked? Why was this happening? Clio smiled playfully in front of her, and Alice didn’t know if she should be more impressed or bothered by the Muse’s powerful spell of presence. 

But the determination stayed, inspiration struck a very central chord in Alice, and she latched onto it with all her might. 

 _“We don’t know who we need to speak to that would have intimate knowledge of the beginnings of this Library, how it was formed and what we can do to protect it from falling apart. We are losing magic, the branches are failing, and if my own hypotheses are right - the infection will spread like it would in a living thing. We don’t know who to ask for help, or what can be done. Can you please help us, give us a direction or a name? Something to help us along.”_ Alice heaved a breath after she forced her entire plea out, not sure that she actually blinked or breathed as she had spoken. The Muse’s effect on her was the most palpable thing she’d ever experienced that didn’t include physical touch.

Clio hummed to herself, and carefully turned her gaze to the scroll she had under her arm. She drew it out to unfold it and inspect the tiny scrawl covering the top half. Her elegantly draped toga slipped from where it had already been half off her shoulder and pooled in the crook of her arm, and Alice blushed at the exposure - turning her pointedly undivided attention to the Muse’s hands as they traced over the lines of text on the scroll, not trusting her wandering eyes or the impact of the Muse’s impossibly perfect face. But her elegant hands flowed like water as they expertly skimmed the words, and watching them had been a mistake Alice hadn’t counted on. She became entranced as the words glowed golden and changed when Clio moved past them, replacing the discarded information with lines anew. Her fingertips were stained in ink, exquisite and delicate, and Alice found herself liking her lips once more. 

 _“The true ones that can help you, won’t_ ,” Clio told them, tilting her head as she inspected further along the scroll. _“They have rules that prevent them from doing so, and I cannot tell you who they are because of who I am_ .” Alice didn’t know what that meant, but like the shape of the library branches she felt it was important, and she mentally marked it to inspect later. _“Your best chance at finding what you seek lies within Seshat, for she is the Mistress of the House of Books  - or in the Immortal Lü Dongbin, for he is in part a protector deity and will be sympathetic to your cause.”_ She rolled up her scroll and tucked it back under her arm, also making herself decent once more as if she had suddenly felt a draft and wanted to cover her shoulder. Alice cleared her throat and nodded thankfully, making herself look into the face of the Muse of History as she said so.

_“Thank you, for your help and your own sympathies.”_

_“You have a spark for knowledge within your soul, Alice Quinn,”_ Clio said with a smile, a true one that warmed Alice’s bones in a way that didn’t set her blood on fire. _“If you save your Library, and your friends, but still find yourself in need of allies - or a touch of inspiration - call me_.” And with a subtle wink, the Muse disappeared in a flash of light, taking the tributes in the bowls with her as she disappeared. But in their place, in the bowl at the point closest to Alice, was a small scroll tightly bound in red twine. Bending down to pick it up, Alice could make out fresh ink stains around the edges, and opened it to see a direct summoning spell that would call the Muse of History back without the need of three other Magicians.

It was advanced, forbidden magic, and Alice had never seen anything so beautiful on paper before.

“Did she just give you her number?” Hughes asked in wonder and disbelief. Shelia grinned a sly grin at her as well. When Alice just nodded, a slight curl to her own lips at the beautiful tight scrawl in Ancient Greek over the parchment, Hughes burst in an outright laugh of delight and gave her a high five. “You get to talk to the next one.”

-

Seshat didn’t answer, which was kind of rude and Alice was still riding high on her interaction with Clio to give two fucks about it. The scroll burned like a brand inside her dress pocket - yes, her dress had pockets, and she was lowkey upset no one had asked about them - but she knew it would be a while before she got a chance to use it at all. There was a lot that needed to happen before she got to think back on the looks the Muse gave her. Or what the Muse could teach her, inspire in her. As she had told Eliot the day before, _after_. 

The items used for summoning Lü Dongbin were less blood and bone and more gifts that Alice would kill for her in her Christmas stocking. A beautiful ink stone, calligraphy pens made with animals hairs from all over the known realms, fresh charcoal to grind, and the most elegant parchment that was spelled against damage once the writings were sealed. The summoning spell was easy to do the third time around; but this time Alice and Zelda were doing the vocal part alone since they were the only ones versed in Ancient Chinese dialects, and no sooner had they finished the last hand motion a man appeared from nowhere in the middle of the circle. 

He did look a little confused at first, glancing about the room surrounding him and the four Librarians caging him inside the summoning circle, but his calculating eyes took it all in with quick succession before he settled more comfortably where he sat on the floor. _“Well this is ostentatious; far too extravagant for me. I’m not a god.”_ He said this as if they weren’t aware, and to some who had only done a wikipedia search of his name it could seem that way. But Alice had taken an entire extra course at Brakebills on Chinese Mythology and Ancient Master Magicians, so she knew better and bowed gracefully toward the man seated for all the world like an old village man speaking to people as they passed his house. Instead of the renowned deity, scholar, and Master Magician that had inspired tens of thousands. 

 _“It is an honor to meet you,_ ” she told him, correcting her dialect to mirror his own, and preening that she now knew something that her old Masters professor didn’t. They had gotten into many a heated argument over different texts and opposing informational sources. _“We are here to ask for your help in a very urgent matter_.”

“ _Clearly_ ,” the old man said, immortal though he was he smiled with a teasing air that radiated kinship not just to Alice but to the other Librarians as well. He took time to nod to them each in turn as they copied Alice’s bow of greeting. “ _Please, join me. Tell me your situation._ ”

Alice immediately seated herself on the floor, knees tucked together and her ankles crossed behind her. The excitement she felt, sitting there like one of his students hundreds of years ago, came as fast and sudden as the flash of heat when she’d been pinned beneath Clio’s gaze. The gods had something special about them here, in the Library, like without the burden of atmosphere or reality their true beings shone stronger. Alice had not anticipated being so enamored with each she met. Definitely not how she thought the summonings would go.

Without much preamble, or waiting until the other’s joined them on the floor of the office, Alice launched into her theories and their problems. How the Branches seemed to be shutting down one by one, their discovery of what lay beneath the foundations of their buildings, and what they had witnessed being done there. Alice mentioned her hypothesis about biotechnology, the shapes of the Branches representing cells, and her theories on what they could discover if they just had the time to do so. The possibilities were monumental. 

Sagely nodding along, an impressed but troubled look on his worn and aging face, Lü Dongbin carefully considered Alice’s words for many long, silent minutes after she had pleaded with him to help them find some way to stall time. Some way to save their Library. 

 _“The amount of information you have attained through assumption and intuition is astounding,”_ Lü Dongbin said quietly. _“What is even more impressive, is how much of it is right.”_ Alice’s mouth parted in shock, going through the list of ideas in her head to try and sort what the deity could be referring to. _“You are so very close to understanding the foundations of what this order was built from, you have just missed one very small detail. The smallest of details can often hide the essence of the truth._ ” With a careful wave of his hand, one of the books on the desk rose and floated towards him, settling silently on the ground and flipping it’s own pages to the map view Alice had inspected earlier that day. The one that depicted the overview of all the Branches and their shape. With a slight raising of his fingers, the ink itself bled from the page and lifted itself into the air, showing the branches floating in space as they were in actuality.

 _“Do you see?”_  

Alice did see. The Branches were hovering in a pattern, a spiral pattern that wove around itself in equidistant segments. It looked like a helix, or ribbon wrapped around a Maypole; but Alice knew what it was supposed to represent. The Branches didn’t make up an organism, and the planets themselves may have resembled red blood cells, but if the double helix formation was in line with what she’d learned in college biology - the DNA wasn’t just beneath their feet, the whole system was the DNA. A double helix structure is what makes up a DNA molecule. She had been _very_ close, but now the whole formation made sense, as their fears were confirmed. By erasing the data in the foundation of the Branches, the gods were indeed erasing magic from existence. One wrong line disappearing, and they could erase anything - even humans. 

 _“What do we do?”_ Alice murmured, real fear striking deep in her chest. This was too big, this was creation and destruction and all of reality - and she had been put in charge of it. She was 25, for fucks sake. 

 _“Well, you won’t like it,”_ Lü Dongbin told her, catching Alice’s attention sharply. _“You will need to petition your cause to those higher than I, but you cannot summon them. You will have to go to them. Because they are already here, they are the ones that created the Library.”_ Even Zelda looked surprised. She had been quiet save for translating Alice and Lü Dongbin’s conversation to Sheila and Hughes, and seemed to be restraining herself from speaking up and asking the most pertinent question.

 _“Who are they?”_ Alice asked for her, her gaze flitting to Zelda’s curiously worried one and back. But the old man just smiled at her softly. 

_“You already know.”_

No, no she didn’t. Alice’s eyebrows knit together, a frown pulling at her lips. That was the whole point of all of this, they needed to know who to talk to. Who could stop the Library from falling apart as magic withered? Why would he say they already knew?

 _“You can’t tell us,”_ Alice assumed, her frown deepening. He wasn’t saying that somewhere, subliminally she knew all along. He was saying that she had the capacity to figure it out herself, without forcing him to break rules or some bullshit immortal code among the ethereal. She _knew_ she was smart enough to figure shit out - the issue was that the Library was _already_ falling apart. They didn’t have time to keep researching. _“Can you tell us anything? Give us a direction?”_

 _“You merely have to look at the true essence of a library,”_ Lü Dongbin said with the same soft, knowing smile. _“What do you see when you step inside. Not what it contains, for we already know everything there is to know about books - there is only so much to be said about ink and paper. No, look to the ones who come to a Library. What do you see when you look at them? In the stacks and stacks of stories and words, what do they seek? Among decaying and moldering paper they stare blankly into a world beyond their reach, to experience what has already come to pass. What does that say - about a Library?”_

Alice leaned back and settled more into her seat on the floor. He was trying to say something without saying it, and she knew she would have to dissect this moment word for word to know what he was trying to get at. 

 _“Even if I answered you, you wouldn’t be able to tell me I was right,”_ Alice pointed out. A careful nod was her only response, and they understood each other. His subliminal subtlety would be the key, and Alice thanked him with her gaze alone - not wanting to break their informal pact of secrecy. _“I’m honored to have this chance to speak to you.”_ Lü Dongin smiled a radiant smile that he quickly subdued, bowing his head in what Alice thought was a formal parting, but then he continued to speak.

 _“I believe it was Plato that wrote, ‘What would not a man give if he might converse with Orpheus and Musaeus and Hesiod and Homer? Nay, if this be true, let me die again and again… what infinite delight would there be in conversing with them and asking them questions.’”_ Alice stared hard, translating the phrase in her head and recognizing it - but not it’s exact placement. By the old deity’s careful glance, this too was important. 

 _“Can you buy us some time?”_ Alice pressed, not sure if she even had the right to ask. She didn’t know how much the man before her had just revealed. 

 _“Indeed I can. In texts I wrote when I was old and grey, you will find suspension spells that might aid you in stopping the spread of the disease,”_ he told her carefully, and Zelda had already whipped out a tiny notebook (much like Crissy’s) to write down information. Exact texts, as Lü Dongbin rattled them off. _“It won’t reverse the damage already done, but it will stave off the worst of it until you can come up with a solution.”_

Alice sighed deep and shakily, _“Thank you, Lü Dongbin.”_ She said so with a most respectful title added and bowed before him, which the old man returned. 

 _“You are most welcome. Good luck, Alice Quinn. You’re going to need it - the war is coming.”_ And with a quirk of a smile that held no mirth or joy the man disappeared into thin air, as quiet as a wisp of smoke. 

-

“What _war_?” Margo burst in agitated disbelief. “No one has said anything about a war. Why is this the first we’re hearing about it?” She sat perched on the giant mahogany office desk while Alice sat in her chair with her head in her hands - letting the memory spell work out the entirety of the conversation onto sheets of paper in front of her. The actual conversation flashed in front of her eyes, the words sounded in her head like an announcement speaker in a high school, creating a constant background noise that ebbed and flowed into distinction. But she could still hear Margo as she commented on everything written, snatching up the finished papers as soon as the words finished filling the page and moved onto the next. The transcripts were about halfway through the final conversation with Lü Dongbin, and Margo was soaking up each word with accuracy and scrutiny. 

“I was worried he meant a war on Earth, between Magicians and everyone else,” Alice admitted, talking around the memories playing in her mind’s eye. “That’s what Kady is trying to stop, Julia already went back to help her. But I think if it was as simple as that Lü would have said so.”

“This has some dirty, shit-stained, god-shaped fingerprints all over it, and it fucking reeks,” Margo muttered angrily as she snatched up the paper ontop of the stack in front of Alice before the pen writing stuff out had finished punctuation in the last line. Her dark, vibrant eyes attached to the page and devouring what was written there. “With how much interference they’ve been running, I’m starting to think we’re all just being used and placed like goddamn chess pieces. If I end up being a pawn instead of a rook or bishop I’m going to be pissed.”

“It wouldn’t surprise me, they don’t think much of us,” Alice muttered, the spell coming to an end and freeing her mind of the memories of the summonings. The pen in front of her continued to transcribe furiously, and Margo wasn’t caught up yet with the page in her hands. “Should we warn Eliot?”

“No, leave him be,” Margo told her without a hint of distraction, eyes skimming the end of the page and already reaching for the final one without even looking at it. “He’s been at it for the past 40 hours, and the lying prick hasn’t slept a wink - I know he hasn’t. He’s going to run himself into the ground before he finds his stupid spell.” Alice looked to the closed door in her office that hadn’t been there the week before, knowing that the room was overflowing with used materials and dog-eared books and wadded up scraps of paper. Eliot preferred to write down everything instead of typing it up on a computer, something to do with a partial photographic memory and hand-to-eye memorization, as well as the factor of stress-relief when he got to rip and tear and crumple the notes that lead nowhere when the line of research he had been following failed him. She wanted to go and help him, had wanted to since she made the room the day before. “I woke up this morning and he was already in there, buried in a book and grumbling to himself.”

“I should try and help, give him a fresh pair of eyes, before we dive into this,” Alice mentioned, still watching the closed door as if she could look through it if she tried hard enough. “And you still need to be looking into the clocktrees, has Penny been back from Brakebills South with more information for you?”

“No, not y- holy shit,” Margo cut herself off, eyes widening in recognition. “Fucking shit, I know this. I know I do.”

“What, the quote from Plato?” Alice asked, standing up from behind her desk and coming around to look over Margo’s shoulder at the transcription. “I know it, too, from my Classics classes freshman year.” Six years ago now, wow had it really been that long? “I just can’t remember what - and he said it right after I figured out he couldn’t give me straight answers.”

“I do, I know what it is,” Margo said, the wheels turning in her head so fast and hard that Alice could almost hear the sound of metal on metal as Margo wracked her brain. “That’s right, Plato - but this isn’t his words. It’s Socrates. This is from his book he wrote on Socrates’ trial, fuck what was it called.”

“ _The Apology of Socrates_ ,” Alice recited, suddenly remembering the three part retelling of Socrates giving his own legal-defense and the most important speech of his life. Even though it ended with his death.

“Shit - that’s right, the most unapologetic apology ever,” Margo smirked, but it dropped like a brick as her gaze snapped to Alice’s. “I know what this means. I know what this quote is from.”

“Does it have to do with a specific god so we actually know who we’re supposed to talk to,” Alice half joked, already drained from running in circles and finding different tasks and problems sprouting up like mushrooms from the ground. Big, fucking mushrooms. Every problem was urgent, needed immediate attention and a lot of research to solve, and she didn’t know how they were going to do all of this without catching a break.

“Yes,” Margo stated, and Alice stared in shock. “ _Apology_ is about Socrates’ trial, Plato was there to see it when he was young, and the trial was on the corruption of the youth of Athens. They said he didn’t believe in the gods, and was preaching against them.” Alice felt a vice grip around her chest tighten to the point her heartbeat hurt with each thump against her ribs. “But he wasn’t - he said this part, here, at the climax of his speech.” She pointed to the quote on the page next to Lü Dongbin’s name. “He was talking about Hades.”

“Hades,” Alice said, breathless. Of course. “Lü said I knew who it was. He said they were already here, in the Library. That they started the Library - it was Hades and Persephone.”

“And your Muse girlfriend couldn’t rat them out because she’s a part of the Greek pantheon,” Margo pointed out, flipping through the pages of the transcript and pointing to another part of the end of the conversation. “You see what he said here - _What do you see when you look at a Library?_ Asking what a library’s essence is? Libraries in Ancient times, and in the Classics, were usually hand-in-hand with the gods. They were points of access to the Underworld. Oh my God - here!” She pointed to another part of Lü’s words. “ _-they stare blankly into a world beyond their reach_ . Holy fuck that Chinese god is a _genius_.”

“Tell me,” Alice demanded, already racking her brain for the entirety of her Classics classes that she honestly hadn’t needed with how much her father and mother loved Ancient times. 

“He told us everything without telling us,” Margo said. “The Underworld is full of souls, and shades. Shades are talked about a lot in Ancient Greek shit. I always remember them from the Odyssey, when Odysseus has to give the shades sheep’s blood to make them talk to him. Shades stare blankly because they have no passion, no emotions. You have to bleed to give them life.” To hear their stories.

“And instead of bleeding in a Library, you give up your time - minutes of your life - to read about others,” Alice said, stretching for the connection, but it somehow felt right. “Stories come alive when you read them, like dead souls, when you give them your time. Your life blood.”

“Hades and Persephone were the original Librarians,” Margo smiled in disbelief that held no joy. “We have to talk to them, and we have to go to them - because they are in the Underworld. The Library has a branch there.”

“It’s the oldest Branch,” Alice murmured, still holding the sheet of paper with Lü Dongbin’s cleverly placed clues. “It would have to be, wouldn’t it?”

“I think our stories are finally starting to meet up, thank fuck,” Margo sighed, this time the quirk of her mouth showing some relief. “What’s the chance that war is just a metaphor?” Alice smiled back at her, the relief palpable and contagious. But they didn’t get to bask in it long, because the newest door of the office banged open and Eliot emerged with papers in his own hands and a wild look in his eyes. He looked crazed in the most unhinged way. Hair askew, raccoon circles around his eyes and beard burn on his jaw where he’d been rubbing at the stubble, his sleeves rolled up messily and scrunched haphazardly, in fact the whole button down was crumbled as if he had slept in it for a week. He’d even lost his vest at some point. 

He crossed the room in two long strides and slammed the notebook papers onto the desk, a list Margo recognized in tidy scrawl belonging to her memory charm with words and checkmarks all over it. Every item had something, and it took her a moment to realize they were all answers. 

“I have it,” Eliot said, triumphantly. Yet somehow still completely spent, his voice rough as gravel. The exhaustion in his face, however, did nothing to hide the raw relief in all it’s consuming glory. “I have _him_ \- and I need everyone.” 

-

_The Anti-Verse; Fillory_

-

Once they managed to find their bearings, Eliza had known where they were. Ultimately, so had Quentin, but it wasn’t until they climbed out of the ravine and started making their way through the dense Fillorian forest that he started to see things he knew. Places and landmarks, memories threatening to wash ashore in his mind and cloud his vision once more. But then the sight of what lay before them shocked him back to Earth - or Fillory, he guessed.

They had reached the clock barrens. Eliza’s clock barrens, which she had planted and cared for for hundreds - perhaps thousands - of years, when it was all laid out in a linear way. The trees were towering, thick and old and well weathered, but they were also silent as the grave. Eliza’s gasp was audible in the quiet, her small hands clenched into fists to mind the shaking, and she clamped her mouth shut as her wide eyes darted to every tree. The clocks were large, their faces dusted with age and grime, some broken and some just fogged beyond visibility, but none of them were ticking. Not a single one. The air still tasted of magic, time magic which always left an iron and ore sensation on the roof of your mouth, but it’s density and clarity was fading. A dozen half-lives already passed as it deteriorated like radiation, but even an inexperienced Magician would have felt its effects. Quentin could feel his bones tremble, the very marrow quaking and the sensation was enough to grate his teeth. Akin to nails on a chalkboard, but inside every inch of his body. It was unsettling, and scary, and Quentin didn’t want to walk beneath the canopy of dead branches and feel the effects of breathless time bouncing off each other and his very soul, but Eliza was already walking towards the center of the barren. 

A coward he was not, or so he told himself - over and fucking over again - as he forced one foot in front of the other and followed her into the ring of trees. Eliza stood, shock and sadness sharply apparent on her usually guarded face as she looked around at her dead clocktrees, and then she caught Quentin’s eye and just looked sad. 

“I might have been wrong, about Fillory,” she admitted, not able to look away from her poor trees for more than a few moments. “Maybe nothing is alive here.” 

“Just because the clocktrees are dead, doesn’t mean everything is,” Quentin told her as gently as he could, coming up to stand beside her and not sure where their relationship stood on comfort. So he shoved his hands in his pockets and tried to just be there for her as she grieved. Processed. He’d been there, many times, and sometimes someone just standing with you was more than enough. “We have all of Fillory to see. I really think something is alive here, or half alive. Can’t you feel it? Or… smell it?” He wrinkled his nose and looked around carefully, warily. He could still smell the sweet-rot, the damp decay, but there was no obvious source. Something had to be alive here. The smell alone was a call for help. 

“I just thought that was the Northern Marsh,” Eliza mumbled distractedly, not looking away from one tree in particular just in front of them. It had a gilded golden face, and elegant black hands made of spirals like an old grandfather clock, the roman numerals shining in gold even as tarnished and worn in as they were. It was still silent, the clock stuck on an odd time and the second hand hanging in a thin line pointing straight down to the Earth - as if it hadn’t even had the strength to make a full last turn before it fell and stopped in its tracks. “The Marsh always smells like that.” And it wasn’t far, just a couple miles over the hills to the West. They were North of Whitespire, and Quentin could see the map of all of Fillory laying itself out in his mind. He knew where he was, where every place he’d been laid in comparison, but not what he was looking for. 

What, in all of Fillory, could still be alive when it was dead?

A concept? A legacy? Was it a reference to the line of Kings and Queens from Earth - alive even when it was dead? The line tended to go dead for centuries, but always remained.  No, he didn’t think his quest would hinge on a play on words, and if it dead then seriously - fuck the gods. 

No, it had to be something that lived, breathed or beat a rhythm in it’s chest. Could go on with no sun, no water, could live forever suspended in time - 

“You know that I remember every one of your lives, all 40 of them,” Eliza said quietly, leaning her head towards him with a quiet tick to the side, never taking her eyes off her tree. It must have been a special one, maybe even her first that she planted there. “All the timelines had their own memorable moments, heroes and villains, downfalls and triumphs. No one was the same as the other, and that’s what made it remarkable. Something as small as a single change in the beginning could drastically change the outcome - but there’s nothing like the first. The original story.”

“Didn’t we all die?” Quentin asked, not understanding fully.

“Yes,” Eliza admitted, nodding. “But before that happened, you lived - really lived. You had a real chance, all of you, and it convinced me to try and alter it just a smidge. To see if, with a small advantage, you could actually make it. I don’t know if this timeline was actually the one that had all the answers, all the right choices and moves made, but it got us pretty far.” She said this last part with a smile that was both proud and sad, finally looking back to Quentin’s dark eyes. “Well, not _us_ , per say - but everyone else.”

“We didn’t do too bad, either,” Quentin tried to say, but his smile didn’t fully form or even reach his eyes. He’d still died, but this time it wasn’t The Beast or The Monster or even the wrath of a god, and he swallowed back those very important factors before the words could escape his throat. 

“I suppose so,” Eliza said with a small smile still gracing her features. “But - one thing that always remains in every timeline. No matter what, as long as the two of you get the chance to meet and don’t die early in the game, you and Eliot always have something special.” Quentin’s attention snapped to Eliza in shock, her profile unchanged and as serious as could be. “The first time around, the two of you had all the answers. You had each other. It’s nice to see that things are coming full circle,” she looked over to him with a soft expression. Quentin could feel something vulnerable hold on tight to his throat, and he knew it showed in his face as well. In his eyes, which were wide and unsure. He didn’t know what to say - he did think that he and Eliot always had something special, a connection and understanding that went beyond words. But even then, Eliot always knew what to say to him, and Q could always seem to find his voice when the other man was near. 

“I hope so,” he finally answered, swallowing thickly and looking back to the clocktree Eliza had been staring at so longingly. “What’s so special about this tree?”

“It was the first in the grove,” Eliza said with a nostalgic smile, sad and fond. “I grew it from the smallest tree. Just a sapling, with a tiny wrist watch face pressed into the bark. You might not know this, but all Clocktrees grow - and the clocks grow with them. It’s magnificent and fascinating to see.” She sighed and looked at the dead clock face in front of them. “These trees will never grow here again, I’ll never see how tall or large they can get.”

Quentin was quiet as Eliza continued to mourn the ceasing of time, of her creations laying in this version of Fillory as dead shells of themselves, and felt a pause in his thoughts - profound and resonating as a gong ringing. It vibrated through his skin, and the memory cloud covered his eyes once more as he saw something very, _very_ important play out in real time. Something he hadn’t thought about in a long while.

“I have an idea.”

-

The castle of Whitespire was an impossible sight; the very air surrounding it felt surreal, and magics beyond their comprehension (even Bacchus’s) dripped from the stacked stones themselves. The once spinny metal diamonds atop the towers still hung there, suspended like puppets on strings, but they didn’t move. The towers themselves should not have been standing, and the white stone was charred and broken like the castle had survived an old-fashioned WWII bombing via air-raid. The grounds were almost unrecognizable, and Quentin worried the more they ventured towards the base of the castle that he would get lost in the vast wasteland before them - but he had Eliza with him. Between the two of them, they could find the Queenswood. 

The Queenswood was mere stumps, tattered dead trees, broken limbs on the ground that cracked and turned to dust when they so much as brushed against them, and Quentin could tell Eliza was having just as hard a time seeing the ruins of Whitespire as she had the dead clock barrens. But he pushed through, and kept moving until he saw ahead of them a shimmering mist in the air. A barrier so thin and iridescent it was like an oil spill dripping from nowhere, but Q could feel the magic coming off of it - could smell and taste something uniquely sweet and clean. It took him a moment, coming up to the soft barrier to realize he was tasting fresh air. Oxygen. Something only the living needed.

He couldn’t believe he’d been right.

Taking a deep breath, not sure if the oxygen would do anything to him and for the moment not caring - he’d been right, damnit, and Eliza had been right, too - he stepped through the mist and appeared on the other side. The fresh air crept up and curled inside his lungs, brushing against the deadness there and not finding purchase, or substance beyond this fake physical form that might as well have been made of clay, but Quentin could _feel_ it. Ice cold, like eating a peppermint on an already frigidly cold day, but it touched every inch of his body. Even the bits covered by clothes. He knew that his clothes were superficial, so was his hair and his body and his constant, human need to breathe and blink and check for a pulse that wasn’t there. He was a soul, and for the first time since he’d died he stood before a living, breathing thing. Penny hadn’t let him get close enough to his friends at the memorial fire to feel this sensation, but Quentin also knew it would feel different. His friends would feel warm, because they radiated life and pumping blood and splitting cells and heaving breath. What lay before him breathed out oxygen, and stretched it’s roots so slowly that it did not grant warmth to anything. 

Except for a small, nostalgic corner of his heart that felt nothing but warm relief at the sight of the spindly clocktree still struggling for life in the bleak world surrounding it. 

“It’s alive,” Eliza said, her words near lost in her awe. She looked to Quentin, genuinely surprised and awestruck that he had found what they needed so easily. To be honest, Quentin was worried it had been _too_ easy; all because of some unrelated words in Eliza’s eulogy to the Clock Barrens. “How did you know?”

“I didn’t,” Q admitted, shrugging and walking up to the tree standing alone in the clearing. He could almost feel it’s joy at seeing him, as if it recognized him, and it may have been a fucking clocktree but he was glad to see it to. “Eliot and I found it, a long time ago - after Alice died fighting the beast.” They had been hunting the Seeing Hare, and had found a giant clocktree that drew them in like moths to the flame. As big around as a house, with with clock face taller than Eliot and giant brass bells growing high in the limbs like acorns or pinecones would. On the other side of the clearing he could see the remnants of it, behind the shimmering mist. But just yards away was the tiny sapling that had been as amazing to find as the 'Big Ben Clocktree' - as Margo had named it. They hadn't known, at the time, that clocktrees grew. Or that their seeds would grow new ones, with clock faces all their own.

Eliza’s words had sparked his memory: sapling clocktrees, clocks that grew, and a tree as tall and large as it could get. What were the odds?

He remembered the silver watch face glinting in the Fillorian sun, against bark much richer in tone and flourishing in greenery. It was a pocketwatch, he could tell even when he first saw it in Fillory, and it ticked carefully - almost chirping as it did. The clock wasn’t supposed to feel alive, but to Quentin it did. Maybe that was part of the magic of clocktrees; clocks aren’t alive, they just tick on because of their mechanics, but trees were. Melded and grown together, maybe the clocks - in a way - were also alive, somehow. Quentin reached out and touched the clock face, felt the vibration of the seconds hand ticking by in a steady rhythm that brought a gleeful smile to his face. He couldn’t fucking believe it.

He’d found it - and all because Eliza had opened up to him about her love for her trees, and told him that he and Eliot’s friendship transcended time and dimensions. That it was special enough to matter in the big scheme of things. He’d never suspected anything less. Eliot was that significant. That important. Together, they had all the answers.

Bacchus appeared beside him with a knife, and Quentin pried the silver pocket watch from the bark. It didn’t have a cover to hide it away, so Quentin held the crystal face in his palm and stared mesmerized, felt it continue to tick away like a little heart beating in his hands. “It’s alive,” he muttered, looking up and Bacchus smirked at him. 

“Of course it is, it’s a clocktree clock,” he said, like Quentin had just remarked that the sky was blue. “Keep watching it, idiot.” Quentin couldn’t keep the smile off his face, wide enough his teeth felt the cold of the air around them as the tree continued to breath beside them. But he looked down and saw the second hand still ticking away faithfully, his very own heartbeat to replace the one he’d been so desperately missing.

But the hour and minute hands, originally set at midnight exactly, began to move. They started to spin in opposite directions, crossing each other and continuing to circle the watch face faster and faster. Quentin felt something drop heavily to his stomach, and he worried that he’d broken the clock, that he hadn’t been meant to pull it from the tree - but the spinning dials were hypnotizing. What the hell did they mean?

He was about to look up and ask Bacchus, who seemed to know more about clocktrees than he’d been letting on, but the man stopped him from looking up with a heavy hand on the top of his head. “Don’t stop,” he told him harshly, and Quentin watched the hands of the clock spin and spin and spin. 

And in the blurred lines of the hands moving against the quartz crystal face, Quentin finally saw what he was supposed to be searching for. Within the movements of the hands, in thread thin lines, was a spell formation. A very specific spell formation, that Quentin recognized the beginning of as easily as he would have recognized the lines on the palms of his own hands.

It was a locator spell, with coordinates that spanned realms. 

The clock wasn’t just his key to leaving the Anti-Verse. It was a homing beacon.

\--


	7. Episode 507

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know, I know - 6 weeks is a hella long time and I'm so sorry. But I have good news. I took the advice of a very good friend of mine and spent all of last month writing down as much as I could of this story. A lot of the chapters are in pieces, but for the most part the story is done. It needs connectors and editing out the wazoo, but no more month-long waiting periods. My friend pointed out that I have no clue if this baby will be early or not, and if I want this fic finished before season 05 begins (which I do!) then I need to just get it all out. 
> 
> New posting schedule: Saturday nights. It's a close one today because my daughter didn't go to bed until super late so it cut into final editing, but Saturday nights I will be posting chapters from here on out. If I miss a week (especially 4 weeks from now) assume it is a baby related emergency. But I have 508-510 pretty much finished so November looks good. Thank you for the patience and support, I hope the chapter doesn't seem rushed or monotone (I know it feels that way to me but I've read it like six times this week so that's probably why).
> 
> No warnings/triggers or notes this chapter! (What? No way!) Yes way, y'all already know I love me some Lev Grossman novel references and we aren't digging deep into Q's suicide this chapter. This one is very Julia centric, I've tried to edit and clean it up as best I could, but my beta skills cannot always be trusted so all mistakes are my bad. Please enjoy and thank you for reading.

\--

Episode 507: You’re A Wizard, Neo  
(The Difference Between Knowing The Path and Walking The Path)

\--

_Brooklyn, New York_

-

In all the time she’d been away, Julia’s apartment still looked as if she had never left. Her overbearing mother paid for a maid service that took care of the upkeep, watered her plants, kept the grime and dust away so it didn’t feel so locked up. If the rooms felt too closed off from the world, her plants were smothered in the silence and filtered light - and Julia could feel their pain. The quiet cries for help. It ached in her veins and tightened around her bones like barbed-wire, even when she had been so small she didn’t quite know how to help them live and breathe. 

Julia now knew this sensation had everything to do with her natural magic adeptations. She’d been categorized as a Knowledge Student at Brakebills, but had been so border-line towards Nature Studies that the professor in charge nearly got into a fist-fight with Fogg over her placement. Some days she wondered if that nature professor had been right. Even when her magic had left her almost entirely, Julia still felt more connection with the Earth and everything that came from it.

As soon as she appeared in her loft living room, sent in the blink of an eye via the Library’s transportation spells, it was like the whole apartment woke at her arrival. The plants brightened, the air filling with a crisp freshness that overtook the dust motes and stale air, and the sunlight that managed to stream around the curtains shone more vehemently - as if a cloud had just finished passing over the sun. The magic that filled the world to the brim was settled in every corner it could find, and intensified in the places untouched by Magicians, like her abandoned loft; a space she hadn’t returned to since before her humanity was forced back upon her. 

With a smile that was soft and surprisingly easy to hold, Julia soaked in the warm magical welcome and went to her windows to push back the curtains and open the vented windows. Letting the sounds of the outer city fill the space and push out the silence that rang in her ears. She needed the noise to help her center her displacement from traveling between the Library and Earth; first things first - she needed to find Kady and get caught up to speed. After a much needed reunion. Julia had no idea how long it had been on Earth while she’d been in the Library and the Mirror World, but she knew it was probably long enough to sweeten the experience all the more.

A deep breath of the city filtered through her cracked windows, the sunshine brushing the skin of her face, and Julia felt ready to take on the world.

-

A quick text was honestly all it took for them to find each other. Technology at its finest. 

Kady had to have her phone surgically attached to her hand these days, with how profusely communicative the network of Hedgewitches in the five boroughs were. The manhunt was in full swing, and as Darsha had told her: the message was ‘Search and Destroy’. If anyone was cautious about the magical world being exposed it was the Hedgewitch community. Kady was still the unofficial leader of all things magic flowing in and out of the main island, despite her best efforts to delegate everything that had grown over the past weeks. From the Magician Exchange Program(™) to the mass collection of binders and spells being collected and spread (securely) via the online connections - thank you googledocs - they had their hands full. The manhunt for the Legion of Doom was just a small, secluded part of the giant monster at work. 

And yes, Kady kept the codename Julia made up for the six men on the Magical World’s most wanted list. It helped lighten the mood in discussions and briefings.

Julia found her way back to Marina’s loft, and was surprised to walk into an empty room. Wrecked for the most part, covered in furniture and charging cables and power strips to increase the number of outlets. But all the Hedges that had been there only months before, that had filled the apartment from wall to wall like a college sit-in, were gone without a trace. As if they had packed up in the middle of the day and abandoned ship. The quiet was eerie and foreboding, and Julia swallowed thickly at the silence and imprinted warmth of a hundred bodies that once occupied the main room. Residual magic clinging to the furniture weakly like lint. 

The door burst open, and Julia jumped about a foot out of her skin, ashamed to say it took her a second to recognize the quick, heavy stride of combat boots against the hardwood. Kady didn’t even say anything as she looked around, finally saw Julia standing near the windows, and crossed the space as fast as she could without running. She tasted of coffee and bullet lipstick. Dressed in half business attire, half street clothes, with her wild hair down and free so it tickled Julia’s neck and collarbone as she kissed the breath out of her. She hadn’t even felt her back hit the floor-to-ceiling windows.

Julia had been right, the displacement of time had made the reunion _so_ much sweeter.

“I’ve been wanting to do that for weeks,” Kady told her after long, Earth-shattering moments, voice low and close in the space between them. “Took you long enough.” Julia smiled, lips quivering and over-sensitive, and only hesitated a moment - a split second where she thought she might answer the other Magician. But instead she dove in for another kiss, slower this time, and deeper. 

“I missed you too,” she finally said, when they parted with heavy-lidded eyes and panting breath. 

“Why didn’t you go back to India?” 

Julia just shook her head in response. “I didn’t want to go back without you. And - something is drawing me here. I feel like I _need_ to be here, with you.”

“That would be your lady dick,” Kady grinned salaciously, and Julia noticed her dark rose red lipstick was smeared around her mouth and teeth. She bet she looked the same, if not worse, and it made a giggle bubble up her throat. “It’s a thing, urbandictionary.”

“Not what I meant,” Julia laughed, leaning heavily against the wall of windows as Kady stayed pressed against her. The two lounging there as if they had all the time in the world, and the dozen or so burdening problems weren’t pressing down on their shoulders. It was lovely to bask in while it lasted. “I’m serious! I really feel like I’m meant to be here. I’ve gotten as far as I could at the temple. What I need is out here, and I won’t find it meditating under a waterfall.”

“If you say so,” Kady said, her tone indicating she didn’t believe a word of it. “You won’t find it in my bed either.”

“Well it won’t hurt to check,” Julia smirked, cheekily. “But I know you’re about to put me to work on the city-wide search party.”

“Not for another twenty minutes,” Kady whispered, finally pulling back from Julia’s embrace and tugging on her belt-loops to make her follow her. “Or thirty.”

“Or an hour,” Julia suggested.

They didn’t leave the apartment for three.

-

Kady was very well versed in the workings and layout of the Magical Black Market that resided just outside Alphabet City, in the dark corners muggles wouldn’t want to entertain, and only those with the right invitational spells painted onto their skin could even find the door. If they knew where to look. Stacks on stacks of warehouses lined up along the river, warded like layered graffiti, was the main barrier between the Magical world and the rest of New York City. What had once been a dusty din that she’d wandered and bartered through with a distrustful eye was now the most honest place in the world to Kady. Here everything was laid on the table, literally, and it only took an untrained eye to be swindled. If you knew your shit, and stayed just as straight forward - no bullshit - as you wanted the other person to be, then you could find anything. 

Including six men on the run from the most powerful Master Magicians in the world. Or that was her reigning theory. The Black Market was 90% run by Hedgewitches, and they all gave her an amount of respect Kady knew she didn’t actually deserve. But she did her best to live up to the reputation that preceded her. 

She led Julia through the bustling stalls and vendor tables, everything from enchanted tea sets to cursed books that would _literally_ make your eyes bleed could be found spread across the tables. Nothing was regulated or forbidden here. Not even the fake shit - and one could only be so lucky. If someone came in here not knowing what you were doing, it was way better to pick up a stone with a spell carved into it that could locate money only to find that it merely located pennies and nickels hidden in your couch cushions. The opposing option could be so much worse. Deadly, even. 

Despite all of that Julia soaked in the sights surrounding them like a dry sponge - Kady could practically hear her cataloging the priceless artifacts, could see her lips moving as if speaking them made them even more reachable. But she never slowed as Kady headed for a booth on the far back wall where her main contact, Naomi, had her shop set up. Naomi specialized in two things; magical tattooing (which was outlawed in some countries) and information, as well as a collection of things locked up in a display case that cost more than money to purchase. 

“Kadydid, you made it just in time,” Naomi called out at her approach, not even looking up from her work as the tattooing needle buzzed where she was bent over a 20-something’s back, pressing the needle deep into the tissue of his left shoulder blade. The man’s back was covered in intricate lines and writings that probably predated Jesus. Naomi wiped away the collected blood and ink from his skin with a rag made of lambskin, already heavily stained from how long she’d been working, and sat back in a flourish to show off her finished product. 

“Nice linework,” Kady told her in ernest, peering at the writings just as they flashed red deep beneath the man’s skin, threatening to split open where the fresh lines were drawn in. “What is it?”

“Fire demon, trapped in his back like a switchblade ready to spring out whenever this guy needs him,” Naomi said, patting the guy’s arm but he didn’t even twitch. “Nasty work for whoever gets pulls that short straw, it was _pissed_ to be captured.”

“Is he okay?” Julia asked, tilting her head to look at the man’s face and possibly see if he was even breathing. 

“Oh he’s fine, out like a light. Demon insertion burns like a bitch. Think of a normal tattoo but there’s lava in the ink, anyone would pass out two seconds in,” she held up her tattoo gun like a twelve-gauge pistol and Kady could see the interior was actually steaming. “I put all my demon dudes and dudettes under. Then some anti-burn potions and dragon-hide gloves for yours truly, and we’re in business.” She set the entire tattoo gun into a bucket at her feet filled with water, and the sound of it sizzling and evaporating was loud even in the marketplace. “You here for check-in?”

“About to do my rounds,” Kady said, nodding. “Anything good today?” She knew she didn’t sound hopeful, but she came everyday - persistent in her knowledge that the Black Market would be the first place the Legion of Doom would surface in NYC. 

“One of my girls thinks she spotted someone earlier, looking for a dislocation spell tattoo, cloaking and anti-curse - the works,” Naomi said, stripping off her iridescent dragonhide gloves. An item that had been outlawed in all civil circles for the past 600 years. No dragonhide had been used or collected since the non-magical raids and slaughter in England centuries ago, so the gloves Naomi had resting across her thigh had to be older than every building in New York City. “She told him to come back when I was done with this session, if you stick around and he actually shows up tonight might be your lucky night.”

“Thank fuck,” Kady hissed out in relief, swaying in place as she rolled her head back to try and erase some of the tension in her spine. This was good news, she needed to not be as stressed or strung tight as she was - especially not after what happened back at the loft. She should be loose and carefree as a damn water nymph. Julia gave her one of her small side smiles that held more warmth than it had any right to, secretive and still bright as the sun. It helped ease some of the strain and Kady did her best to lift one side of her lips in a return smirk. It probably didn’t come off as lovely as it did on Julia. “We’ll make the rounds, and keep an eye out. Text me if he shows.” Naomi nodded, and waved at them both as Kady took Julia’s hand and led her down the narrow alley-like walkways between the booths and crowded stalls. She would speak to some other vendors on her way, but if Naomi was right all they had to do now was wait.

-

Julia couldn’t believe her eyes as they meandered through the underground Black Market. Everything she recognized jumped out at her as if under bright spotlights, screamed to be seen and appreciated for their rareness and stark reality only a couple feet from where she stood. And she recognized quite a bit. Amulets, tomes, crystals the size of her face, feathers and furs and bones of magical creatures, and even a few in cages squawking and screeching into the dimness - as well as some artifacts from Fillory and the Library. She wasn’t even sure how they came to be on a table for sale; despite how often she and her friends traveled between the different worlds, no one else on Earth had the same connections with Fillory that they did. It wasn’t as if any Magician could just pop over, most didn’t even know it existed beyond the children’s books. The Library was another case altogether, many Master Magicians probably had access to the realm of countless books, but all the items she found for sale were obviously stolen. That wasn’t an easy feat, and The Library wasn’t known to be forgiving.

They wove through the stacks of crates and cages and bartering Hedgewitches, Kady’s warm hand clasped tightly around her own, fingers threaded through hers securely as they had to walk single-file in most places instead of side by side. Julia let her take the lead as she became lost in the sights and sounds surrounding her, trusting the other woman to keep her from running head first into someone’s booth. Despite the days that had passed since her incident under the waterfall in India, Julia still felt a deep disconnect from the rest of the world. Especially when she was on Earth. In the Library and the Mirror World it had been easier to ignore, because she was already displaced in a world she didn’t belong to, but on Earth her own feet didn’t feel as if they could touch the ground. Her mind was far away from what she could see and smell and touch. Only in quiet, intimate settings - like back at the loft - did she feel grounded enough to feel with the intensity she remembered having only a week before. Even the damp, vibrant forests in India had seemed faint and not quite as they were before. The magic that flowed through everything breezed past her, a current in a swiftly moving river that she was just standing in as she observed the scenery.

If she hadn’t been so absent-minded, lost as her gaze skittered over everything in a daze, she would have walked right past the old woman in her booth of enchanted plants and not even bothered to look at her face. She would have missed the way her pale green eyes bled black, then disappeared as she blinked, but her stare stayed rooted to Julia as Kady led her past. She had to basically dig her heels into the floor to get Kady to stop walking, the other also lost in her own world - one of surveillance. They had been circling the tattoo booth, keeping an eye out for one of the six men on their Most Wanted list.

“What is it? You see him?” Kady asked quietly, leaning far into her space to speak the words. Julia could feel her warm breath on her neck and cheek as she spoke. It did nothing to mask the guilt that Kady thought she had been looking out for the men just as she was, that was what they were there for after all. 

“No, but there’s something wrong with that woman,” Julia told her, watching the woman who was still staring at her. They were a few paces past her booth now, but Julia couldn’t look away. Kady looked apprehensive at the creepy stillness, so Julia squeezed her hand and continued, “You go ahead and circle around, keep watching Naomi’s booth. I’m going to ask her what she wants.”

Kady hesitated, but nodded at the steady and calm look on Julia’s face. “Okay, shout if you need me.” Julia promised she would, and they separated going opposite ways. Julia felt the cold absence of her hand more than she’d felt anything else since stepping into the Black Market.

The old woman, half hidden behind her towering plants that should not have existed outside the cretaceous period or a Little Shop of Horrors set, didn’t even blink at Julia’s approach. Her expression didn’t change, either, and Julia slowed to a stop - not so sure anymore about talking to her alone. But like someone flipped a lightswitch, the woman smiled a kindly, grandmotherly smile and her faraway gaze remained as stoic as ever. “How can I help you dear? Looking for something in particular?” She didn’t even blink. It took Julia another full minute to realize she was blind, and she felt foolish for another few seconds before she remembered the inky blackness.

“I was just making sure you were alright,” Julia told her carefully. “I saw you eyes do something strange.”

“Oh!” the old woman said in surprise. “Then you must be Julia. I wasn’t expecting you so soon.” She shuffled around from behind her table of potted plants and took Julia’s hands in hers, her withered pale hands stained with dirt and cool against Julia’s warm, silver-ring wrapped fingers. The old woman sighed as she clasped her hands, a happy realization crossing her vacant expression. “You have a touch of nature about you, I can feel it,” she said as she gave her hands a squeeze and brought her back behind her table. “I have something for you, and a message.” She let go of Julia’s hands when she had her in place, caged in by greenery that breathed fresh oxygen her direction, a few of the tendrils and flower faces arching towards her in curiosity. After a brief, blind shuffle through a lockbox on the back table, she fetched a stone and pressed it to Julia’s palm. “You’ll need it later, it’ll be your bargaining chip to get the real message.”

“Who wants to give me a message?” Julia asked, already not liking the cloak and dagger approach. It reminded her too much of the last time she and Kady had wandered New York in search of a mysterious message - to find Our Lady Underground. She didn’t want a repeat experience. 

“One of the few who truly matters,” the old woman said with a soft smile. “I don’t get to know it, but I know who carries it. Search for White Fur, you’ll find him in the street urchin camp below us. It sprawls a ways, but ask around - you’ll find him.”

“I don’t know if I can,” Julia told her honestly, looking back over her shoulder to try and spot Kady still wandering through the stalls. “We are searching for someone already, and I’m still on a journey of my own - I don’t think I can juggle another adventure.”

But the old woman smiled in a way that was more mischievous, and a lilt to her voice sharpened Julia’s attention. “It’s all connected, dear. Try not to overthink it.”

Julia blinked. “Wait, what?” The old woman just patted her hands that were still wrapped around the smooth river stone, like one would a confused child. 

“Julia! He’s here!” Kady called, snapping Julia’s attention away from the woman for a split second. She didn’t want to keep the stone, or take the woman’s side quest. 

“Go, it’s already begun.” Because that didn’t sound ominous. Julia glared a little, but pocketed the stone and rounded the table to race down the walkway towards Kady’s voice. She caught sight of her mane of dark curls flying behind her as she too ran, sprinting between the booths after a man in a black hoodie and worn-in corduroys. They near ran into each other at a cross section, and Julia pointed in the direction of the man, sending Kady first as she followed her so close she about stepped on the back of her shoes in her haste. 

Messages be damned, she needed to get her head back on straight and help Kady like she’d planned on from the beginning. This was what she was in New York for. 

Julia purposefully ignored the niggling reminder of what she had told Kady back in the loft. Something had been drawing her there, telling her that New York was where she was meant to be. Where she would find her answers. But she pushed it away; because she had been handed the key to her answers at the most inopportune time, and Kady deserved just as much attention and necessity as Julia’s spirit journey or whatever had called her to the urban jungle. 

It could wait. The man running for his life ahead of them wouldn’t. 

Priorities.

-

_The Library_

-

The most jarring part of traveling from places like the South Pole to the Library was the change in planetary climate. The shock to the body of one temperature suddenly becoming another, and with the case of the Library a different oxygen level and gravitational pull - Fillory could be worse sometimes, but at least it had the opium-laced air to help ease the effects. Penny of timeline 23 appeared in Alice’s office, eyes shut and whole body strung tight as he prepared for the change in planetary systems like bracing for impact with a semi-truck. There was really no way to be ready for it, but closing his eyes was a great way to trick his brain into thinking it wouldn’t be as bad this time around. He still white-knuckled the cardboard box in his hands as his legs threatened to give out, the heavy push and pull of the spinning rock formation took a toll on his new location more and more each time.

“Tell me that’s not for me” Margo said, half sprawled on Alice’s desk and her heels kicked off on the floor. Not even looking up at his entrance. She’d been resting her eyes for a minute as Alice listed more and more components on a chalkboard Crissy had rolled in. Margo stretched out her hand with a sigh, awaiting a file or stack of papers or whatever Penny had brought for her from Brakebills South. “Because that’s just what I need, more shit to read and decipher.”

“I see you two are in a good place,” Penny droned, skimming what Alice had sprawled all over the giant chalkboard and already wishing he hadn’t even tried. 

“Our shit pile is officially a mountain,” Margo said, face buried in the crook of one arm on the desk and muffling her words, but she made a grabbing sensation with the still outstretched hand. “Just give it to me, I’ll throw it on top and pray for an avalanche to kill me.”

“It’s not that bad,” Alice said, having finished her notes and turned to Penny for the first time. Her eyes went straight to the box. “You really have that much going on down there?” Margo finally looked up as well and saw Penny had not brought her a folder or binder with a condensed version of his data collection - and groaned outright. 

Penny dropped the box on the desk loudly and glared at the two. “This is actually going to help you, if you bothered to look at it. Each binder in here is a clocktree, I have about two dozen so far.” He reached in and pulled out one that wasn’t one of the larger collections that probably belonged to an old Live Oak or something. “I figured out ways to locate where the broken components are in each tree, and what’s wrong with them. You’re welcome.” He handed the binder to Margo’s still outstretched hand, and her eyebrows arched at the good news.

“At least something is going right,” she muttered, flipping open the binder to Dean Fogg’s highlighted portions and summaries on the first couple pages. “This will make everything go faster, when I can finally get to it.”

Penny narrowed his eyes at her. “What do you mean? I just busted my ass for a fucking month getting all this shit to you.”

“And I’m very grateful,” Margo told him with a stern look and steady voice. “Calm your busted ass down. We have a priority list going, and fixing the clocktrees isn’t at the top at the moment.” She nodded towards the far end of the chalkboard - obviously the first thing Alice had started writing - where indeed they had written a numbered list of problems that needed fixing. “Defcon 1 is getting Q back, because we’re pretty sure our days are numbered there.”

“Why?” Penny asked, trying to tame back his agitation but it still sounded snappish.

“Because magic is already vanishing from the Library,” Alice filled in. Margo’s lips were pursed and she was giving Penny the full brunt of her own annoyance and end of her patience. “We’re worried it’ll start leaving the different worlds it’s connected to, and once there’s no more magic in Fillory we will lose our chance to save Quentin.” As steady as her voice sounded, there was definite worry in Alice’s eyes as she said it in plain terms. “He’ll be stuck, and we don’t even know if he can pass on if he doesn’t finish his quest.”

Penny exhaled, but agreed that sounded a bit more urgent than fixing the clocktrees. “And if there’s no more magic in Fillory then you don’t really need to fix the trees anyway.”

“You think they’re in Fillory?” Margo asked, sitting more elegantly perched in her chair as she continued to skim the contents of the box Penny had brought.

“I’m pretty sure I’ve seen a few of them,” Penny told her. “Down on Earth I have each tree printed out in code, you can see what kind of tree it is and everything inside it. I took pictures, they’re in the binder.” Margo flipped to the back and found legit Polaroids stapled to the back showing a thin aspen-looking tree and a few close-ups of the broken clock face in layers. 

“You have been busy.”

“So have you,” Penny mumbled, looking back to the list Alice had written and walking closer to inspect it further.

  1. Save Quentin - see Eliot’s plan
  2. Find way to meet with Persephone/Hades
    1. Ask about War
    2. Petition Old Gods?
  3. Cease spreading of magic dead zone
  4. Fix Clocktrees, save Fen and Josh and fix Fillory
  5. Earth crisis? (ask Kady for status update)



“What War?” Penny blanched, eyes narrowing further. War was not something he had any remote interest in being a part of. “On Earth?” if that was the case then screw going home.

“We aren’t that lucky,” Margo muttered, abandoning her pile of binders and coming to stand with Penny and Alice in front of the chalkboard. 

“I would like explanations for about 90% of this,” Penny said, not liking anything the further he read into Alice’s notes. The Library was alive? The actual fuck? “And shouldn’t saving Fen and Josh be moved up to happening _before_ magic leaves Fillory, too?” 

“Well we didn’t actually have a concrete plan beyond fix the clocktrees,” Margo pointed out. “But if you just gave us a shortcut to that shit, then yes we’re moving that up. No magic in Fillory, no rescue missions.” 

“I’ll switch them around and we can compare notes,” Alice said, looking to Penny. “It would be a big help if you stayed instead of going back to Mayakovsky. We’re going to need all hands on deck for a while, especially with Eliot’s plan.”

“Yeah, where _is_ Eliot?” Penny asked, looking around and back through the open door that led to the den of solitude and study that Alice had created just for the Coldwater Rescue Mission. But the tall man wasn’t anywhere to be seen. 

“So - here’s the thing,” Alice began, and Penny already decided he wasn’t going to like where this was going. The look on Margo’s face, past annoyance and borderline angry, confirmed it in seconds.

“He’s doing something stupid isn’t he?”

“We’re about to go after him,” Alice insisted, “he’s back on Earth. We told him to wait for us-”

Margo’s crossed arms and solid line of her shoulders only fortified her stance on the subject. She scoffed angrily. “All we did was give him a headstart, and that idiot better not be dead. Or I’ll bring him back too and kill him myself.”

-

_New York, Beneath the Black Market_

-

Julia never even got a glimpse of the man they were chasing. Not a face, hair style, or distinguishing feature beyond his height and agility as he raced down dim back hallways and through rusted metal doors - back further and further into the labyrinth of warehouses that backed up to the Hudson. Eventually. It felt like they extended forever, a single block stretching the length of five or six with no streets to break them up. For all Julia knew it was true; a complex magical illusion, one that was somehow masked from the city and googlemaps. Perhaps by technology based magics that she hadn’t had a chance to study at Brakebills. Julia knew they existed, but she had been so wrapped up in trying to remaster her basics that she hadn’t gotten to explore any of the obscure fields that captured her curiosity. It had been a problem in college, too; she was interested in too many subjects to accurately focus on one single vocation. 

She and Kady rounded corners and sprinted down hallways as fast as they could, Kady’s combat boots perfect for the high-speed chase through the dark and dim and decay surrounding them. The further they dove into the labyrinth, the harder it was to taste fresh oxygen in the air. It wasn’t until Julia slipped, her shoes being far less sensible than Kady’s (but at least she hadn’t been wearing heels), as they rounded another corner and her vantage point became one closer to the floor did Julia finally see why the hallways and doors seemed endless. And why it was becoming harder to breath - why the air was beginning to smell of grime and soil. The hallways were slanted down. They had been chasing him underground, an unknown number of floors beneath the street, which meant Julia was still racing in the direction her spirit journey had directed her. Where the old woman had told her to go. Beneath the Black Market.

Scrambling to her feet, Julia did her best to catch up to Kady and the man running into the long stretch of yellow lamps melded to the metal walls, breaking up the darkness in even increments that made an optical illusion that had her head spinning. She couldn’t remember when she had started to feel light headed, but it suddenly hit her like a ton of bricks and she had to slow to a stop and lean against the gritty metal walls. Why couldn’t she breathe? Kady was a distant figure, the other woman not even aware she’d lost Julia in the maze of hallways. But Julia watched, as she panted for oxygen, as Kady’s strong form and head of dark curls rounded another corner and was gone from sight. The only thing left in that hallway with Julia was the pulsating silence and her heartbeat pounding in her ears. 

Her skin felt clammy and her limbs hot, sweat damp over every exposed inch of her, and her clothes clinging uncomfortably. What was happening? Julia closed her eyes, focused on her steadily slowing pulse and evened out her breaths, as she did when meditating on the temple grounds in India. Until her body had calmed and became more in-tune with the pocket of stillness she inhabited. It only took a moment for her to hear the far off sound of a door opening, the careful click and shush of a push bar as the heavy metal barrier was opened and let someone in - or out. Julia wanted out. She knew she was underground, but being in the tight cube-like hallways was claustrophobic at best, and she needed to be in a more open space. 

On trembling legs, feet of lead and head light as air, she pushed off the wall and began walking towards where the sound had come from, making it all the way down the hallway and around the corner in a complete daze. She found the double doors there, just past another bend that she and Kady had sped around so quickly they hadn’t even seen the doors 20 feet behind them. It was where Julia had first fallen, but she’d been so wrapped up in following Kady - in the revelation that they had been following a decline unknowingly - that she’d missed it too. There was no one there, waiting for her, and no one down the adjacent hallway, either. She had peered around the corner as if expecting a monster, or another of the Legion of Doom backtracking to the surface to get the intel they had come for in the first place. It hadn’t been her first time thinking the man they were chasing was a diversion. Anything was possible.

She also watched way too much Law & Order. SVU more than the original or CI, better character ensemble.

She approached the doors, still listening carefully, but didn’t wait longer than another breath exhaled slowly to push her way through to another world entirely. It was dark, damp, and more dirty than the hallways behind her. The warehouse maze looked bright in comparison, but she didn’t stop as she stepped into the large space and let the doors close behind her. Julia’s eyes adjusted quickly, little lights in the distance drawing her further into what was obviously a very large tunnel. An old subway tunnel, she thought to herself, as she neared and began to make out piping on the walls and remains of the tracks beneath her boots. 

The lights belonged to small enclosures, a campsite of hermits and boxes that were much more dressed up than what she usually saw on the streets. In comparison to the homeless camps she’d viewed in the past, each place was set up was like a mansion. Strings of fairy lights, assembled poles and lamps and heavy-duty walls made of old furniture and sturdy leftovers off construction sites, colorful blankets and rugs and drapings made the camp resemble the most intricate blanket fort ever than a street urchin town - but the quiet bustle of people moving about within each dwelling was enough to convince Julia that she had entered a place that deserved respect. People’s homes, carefully cared for and collected to be built up and remain, and some of the enclosures were a conglomerate of materials that should not have held up or stacked successfully within Earth’s gravity. There were Hedgewithces, Magicians, within the tunnel. 

The different dwellings rose on either side of the tunnel, creating an alleyway between them as they grew higher and higher towards the rounded ceilings - levels created by scaffolding and storage containers that had somehow made it inside the old subway tunnel. How that was even possible, Julia couldn’t begin to fathom. But the alleyway was not straight, it wove this way and that, even though the subway tunnels were straight as could be. She wove her way through the village that looked more and more organic the further she ventured, greenery and moss sprouting to coat walls and entryways like carpet, and not all was green. Some caught the faint lights from lanterns and glowed orange, demanding Julia’s attention as she walked past. She almost stopped a few time to inspect them, but there were more movements from people and animals now, eyes watching her as she walked by their homes. Once or twice, she swore she saw the eyes reflecting light back at her as well. Glowing in the darkness.

It wasn’t until she was so far into the tunnel and among the mish-mashed houses that she finally caught sight of something that should not have been there. At all. It darted across her path so quick she nearly didn’t see it clearly enough, from a distance and in the dark it looked like a cat: but it was not a cat. It was a ferret like creature, large enough to match any alleycat tabby or smaller breed of dog, but it’s dark fur had iridescent stripes all along it’s body and bottle shaped tail. Perfectly drawn into the fur, and glittering in the faint light. It was a magical animal, called a Koontz, and it was only found in the mountains far North of Whitespire. In Fillory. Julia gasped as she recognized it, and the animal - as if sensing her shock and knowing it had been seen - looked back at her with more sentience in it’s inky black eyes than was comfortable. Julia half expected it to open its mouth and speak, some Koontz could like all the other talking animals of Fillory.

But what was it doing _here_.

A clatter to her left drew Julia’s eyes away from the Koontz, darting to the dwelling she was passing, and once again she saw something as it closed the door tightly. It was a man, wearing a beanie and a scarf to mask his defining features, along with a heavy coat against the underground chill, but the tufted ears and billy-goat beard were unmistakable, almost as much as the click of his hooves on the ground that Julia didn’t need to see to know were there. He was a Fawn, and he avoided his gaze to hide the multi-colored irises that would confirm what Julia already knew. 

Creatures from other worlds were living beneath the Hedgewitch Black Market in New York City. She could barely believe it. 

More people darted out of sight, some in hulking figures and low lithe slithers that gave away their non-human characteristics, and Julia huffed out an exhale both to calm herself and steady her breathing. Which felt short and caught up in her chest. She looked to her right and an old woman, with aged skin as cracked and crevassed as an old river bed, watering _plants_ of all things, that somehow were thriving without the sun. She looked up, pale green eyes identical to the woman who had been up in the Market. But she didn’t smile or take Julia by the hand, just nodded down the path to tell her to keep moving.

“I’m looking for someone,” Julia said, aware how loud her voice was in the tunnel despite all the material of the village surrounding her to muffle it. It was that quiet there. 

“I know, keep moving; he’s all the way at the end,” the old woman told her, voice deep and rough and indistinguishable as far as gender. Sounding like she smoked five packs a day. Julia nodded in thanks, not trusting her voice again and continued wandering through the village. Not sure what she was looking for, but trying to remember the name the old shop seller had given her. White Fur.

She had a sinking feeling that this person also wasn’t from Earth, and that this whole thing did have to do with another divine intervention. Julia was solid in her stance now: this time she would say no. Thanks but no thanks. Not even the return of her goddess powers would be enough to convince her to try and make deals with another immortal being ever again. 

Never again.

At the far end of the street urchin village filled with Magical beings, Julia saw the tunnel caved in. A massive pile of rocks and jagged stones, with a small trickle of water falling from the ceiling to travel over the barricade and into another crevice in the floor. They were under the river now, and Julia felt insanely uneasy at the leaking water. It took her a solid minute or two of panic to realize that the reason the river hadn’t flooded the tunnel and washed away the village was because of magic - duh. But if magic was erased, like they were afraid it would be soon, nothing would stop the full weight of the Hudson to come crashing through the ceiling and filling up the tunnel in seconds. She swallowed hard, so loud in her ears she didn’t even notice that she was no longer alone. 

“You’re right to be worried, we all are,” said a raspy, whispering voice right beside her, and Julia jumped at the sight of the man. Or what she assumed was a man. He had white, silver streaked hair pulled back in an intricate Viking-like braid, but the hair started on his face, high on his cheekbones and completely surrounding his face. His large nose was hooked and strange in profile, and he wore sunglasses in the dark, those small circular ones that probably didn’t do much in the first place. He wore an outfit of draped deep red and black clothing, dingy from the tunnel, and near his legs she saw something moving within the folds. But his feet stayed rooted where they were. He had a tail. Julia had no idea what he was, but she assumed he was who she was looking for. 

“Are you White Fur?” She asked for clarification. She’d been wrong before, and would be again she was sure. The man nodded, and Julia didn’t see human ears where they should have been beneath his wild silver hair. He was her height, and she was _short_ , so he would appear even more so up on the city streets or even in the Black Market. “You’re not from Earth.”

“No I am not, but that’s not important yet,” he told her, his voice still closer to a whisper it was so scratchy. “You’re here for your message.”

“Look, I really don’t need any more advice or gifts from gods and goddesses,” Julia interrupted him, trying to keep her voice kind and calm. He was just the messenger. “I’m good on my own. I’ve been making progress with regaining my magic, I’ve been on a whole spirit journey and everything, but my plate is insanely full. I don’t want to take on anything else.”

“Well, that’s really too bad,” the man chuckled, in a mirth that made Julia think he was even older than she had suspected. Why was everyone who was leading her along old? “Because you need this message to complete your _spirit journey_ , as you call it, and it will in turn help you with your other problems. Help the world. Help us,” he looked up, tilting his head with the action, towards the trickle of water spilling over the jagged subway wall pieces in front of them. “Magic is an important balance to the world, to all worlds, and you’ve been offered a chance to save it. Are you really going to say no?” he turned to her as he said it, and though the sunglasses blocked a bit of his face, she realized his eyes were really as small as the circular lenses. Smaller than a human’s. 

“Who is the message from?” she asked, dreading the words as soon as they left her mouth. She had an inkling, and didn’t want anything to do with them.

“Not one of my gods, I can tell you that,” White Fur told her, chuckling. “One of yours. But the message has nothing to do with them. It is merely to point you in the right direction. Your journey is almost over.”

Julia felt relief course through her, both at the chance that there wouldn’t be any speaking with the goddess-who-shall-not-be-named and that she had been right that her spirit journey was almost at an end. “I’ll finally get my answers,” she said quietly, a smile gracing her face.

“And the connection you’ve been seeking, or so I’ve been told,” White Fur smiled back at her happy expression, and his teeth strange shaped and crowded - appearing more like a rodent. In fact, his whole face resembled a rodent, more like Master Splinter from TMNT than a human being. But she didn’t dwell on it.

“Which way do I go?” Julia asked, and White Fur turned to their left, far against the wall where the giant pile of rocks and subway cement gave way to a small opening. Barely large enough for her to squeeze through, and Julia’s wide, dark eyes stared right at White Fur as if she could see his beady black eyes, too. Disbelief on her face. The whole thing looked like one stiff wind from collapsing further in on itself. “-Really?”

“Really, really,” White Fur chuckled, and bowed back, his hands hidden in the folds of his wide sleeves to entertain Julia’s pop-culture comparison even more. “Good luck, Lady of the Trees.” His whisper-thin voice held so much good nature in it Julia couldn’t tell if he was mocking her with her former nickname, or reminding her of the greatness she was capable of. There was a time in her life she had feared nothing, not even counting the days when she’d lived without her shade, so why should she fear entering the darkness beyond the rock barricade. If magic kept the Hudson River at bay above their heads, it probably held the rocks in place as well. She knew for a fact she didn’t fear what lay in the dark beyond it; there wasn’t much left in the worlds that she was afraid of. That she hadn’t endured. 

Being buried alive made her nervous, though - but if spirit journeys were easy then everyone would do them.

So with a deep breath, Julia exhaled slowly and went to the opening in the rocks, pressed tightly against the subway wall that was still intact. It would be a tight squeeze, but she could fit. Julia crouched down, and pressed her front to the curved subway wall, it’s sturdiness a good foundation for strength as jagged stone dragged across her back and shoulders, her ankles and butt, catching on the hair on the top of her head and grazing the back of her neck. He fingers gained scrapes and cuts as she felt her way through the darkness - not able to conjure a ball of light that she could sustain for long without wasting the energy she might need once she made it through - and something in her gut told her she needed to do this blindly. Without magic. It felt like another test, a part of the journey she was on. 

Agonizing minutes stretched on as she moved slowly, side stepping most of the way when the path became too narrow, and hugging the wall gave her more confidence to keep pushing forward instead of retreating. It was harrowing, with her heart caught in her throat as her breath stayed shallow. Uncomfortably shallow; she didn’t want to disturb the rocks any more than her body gliding along the passage was, that hind brain instinct warning her she was just a wrong twitch away from being crushed. But after what felt like an eternity she suddenly felt nothing at her back. The stones had stopped closing her in, and her thin wisps inhaled and exhaled no longer stayed caught in a tight space. They echoed, along with drips of water and a pulsating silence that wasn’t really silence at all. A combination of her heartbeat in her ears and the stretch of the subway tunnel that continued on past the barricade. She fumbled in the dark, finding the courage to leave the safety of the wall and walk blindly into the open space before her. Worst case scenario, she ran into the opposite wall. It was a tunnel, there was only so far she could go in that direction. But her feet found the remains of the cable tracks, and she located the center easily - not sure when or where the sides might become electrified once more. She had her path, her blind path, but it was one that was easy enough to follow.

In the dark her mind played tricks on her, conjuring up images to make up for the lack of sight. Her brain needed to see light and color and shapes, although none were there for her to see. No light to reflect on what might be ahead of her, nothing to show if the tunnel curved or the tracks wove in another direction, but Julia felt a freedom in the ability to give in to the dark. To the not knowing. Until her brain continued to make up for the absence of one of her senses, and a newfound sense kicked into overdrive. A sixth sense that only a small percentage of the population could tap in to. 

Suddenly, as if doused in cold water, Julia felt magic. 

Pure, unfiltered magic, and in such abundance it flooded everything. It cut in a stream through the tunnel, and stopped her dead in her tracks. It flowed through her, touching every nerve ending and lighting it up like a christmas tree - so cold it burned. But the lights felt real in her head, her mind’s eye could see them, bright specks that flickered on and off as they were touched by the current she had stumbled upon. It was like being in the center of a strobe light, _being_ the strobe light, so bright and flickering that she couldn’t make out anything around her beyond light and shadow. Her brain couldn’t keep up, and somewhere in the back of her overwhelmed mind and body Julia wondered if she was having a seizure.

It would make sense, she couldn’t even move a finger. Couldn’t blink, couldn’t swallow as saliva collected in her mouth behind her teeth and tongue, could do nothing but feel everything - relieved that she could still feel a heartbeat hammering in her chest and her lungs trying to claw in air as best they could. 

But then her sight cleared, and not in the way that she thought it would. She couldn’t see the tunnel - not at first - or the tracks beneath her feet. She probably couldn’t have seen a hand in front of her face if she had the ability to lift it. Instead, she _saw_ the magic. So much of it had entered her body, with her stuck in place in the middle of one of the currents that Navin had mentioned back in India, that it filled her fully and overflowed out the top. It was apart of every cell of her body, her very essence, until she had become one with the magic particles flowing in a steady river. She could see every speck of it, in a rainbow of colors - some she couldn’t have even placed a name to. Colors she couldn’t comprehend with the visual spectrum humans were able to access, but in the magical current it didn’t matter. None of it mattered. She could see it all. The very fabric of the world ripping apart to reveal what lay beneath.

To no surprise of her own, what lay beneath were more worlds; alternate realities created from different choices made by different people, a million trillion worlds stacked on top of each other like miles and miles of white ceramic plates. Reaching to the heavens and back again. Different versions of time, of herself within them, of her friends and their choices, all layered together and it was incredible. Insane. But made so much sense. 

The magic that flowed through her was becoming a part of her. It was blending in with her very being, her soul, all the way down to the physical - the cells splitting and dying and creating new layers of skin and hair and blood. It was seeped into her bones, one with the marrow, and Julia felt laughter bubble up from deep inside her because it was all so much. If this didn’t kill her, and something told her that it should have a long time ago, then this had to be cheating as far as her spirit journey went. She’d never really know what emotion sparked her magic, because she was fusing herself with the magical flow of the world itself. The very life blood of the world was now apart of her. Every emotion would spark magic now. 

The tunnel was coming into view now, all around her as the magic bounced off it and sifted through it at the same time, all in a code of color and density. She could read it all, see where the magic had come from and where it was heading - what it could do. She was fucking Neo and she could see the Matrix around her. She could read the code of the world.

Now Julia wanted to know if she could bend it. Break it. Make it again in her image.

But more than anything, she wanted to break it just to see it spill at her feet. She wanted to take it apart and learn how it worked, so she could make it better. She wanted it all, and it was hers. Within her fingertips, and she lifted those fingers to her face to inspect how the magic glistened along every crack and crevice and swirl of her fingerprints like gold dust under a blacklight. It was beautiful. 

“You should step back,” a voice said, far away and not there with her. But she knew it, knew it as she knew her own voice in her head when she pondered all of the questions in life she now knew the answers to. “If you take too much you’ll burst, like a supernova.”

And what a beautiful way to go.

“Julia, step out of the current. You have much to do.” 

Everything came back to her like a trickle of water, like the small waterfall that fell from the ceiling at the street urchin camp from the Hudson River. Quentin stuck in the Anti-Verse, Kady chasing after the Legion of Doom, their threat to expose all of the magical world to the non-magical one, threatening war and chaos, as well as the threat from the gods - to erase all magic. But Julia could see now, looking at everything around her, that magic was as much a part of the world as it was a force in it. Did the old gods not know this? Or did they just not care? Taking away magic would be like taking away water. The world would collapse in on itself, it would cease to be what it was now. It could disappear entirely, if not done right. But it shouldn’t be done at all, it couldn’t be. 

“Now you see. Step back Julia.” And this time Julia did, stepping out of the current - but the damage was already done. The magic that had flowed through her pulsed in her veins, exhaled with her breath, filled her eyes with starlight and her skin with a thousand particles of buzzing possibilities. She didn’t have her goddess powers back, she had something more. Something new. 

“We need to talk, Julia. While you’re at your strongest.”

 _Yes, we do._ She didn’t even need to think aloud. Julia knew she was heard, and she was ready for answers. The few that were left unanswered after her transformation. She could feel her old self coming back down, to settle into the new body of magic and flow of the world, of her old worries and fears and dreams and memories. She was still herself, but better. More able. Just… more.

 _Let’s talk._ _Persephone._

-

_Brakebills; The Physical Kids Cottage_

-

Quentin’s room hadn’t been given to any new Brakebills students, neither had Eliot’s or Margo’s but that was mostly because his room was enchanted out the ass with booby traps to keep wandering drunkards and nosy underlings (ie: Todd) away from his belongings - and everyone was just too afraid of Margo. Some of the Physical Kids knew they went to Fillory for undetermined lengths of time, not that everyone believed it was _actually_ Fillory and not some code word for a secluded island they’d usurped, but the rumors were enough to keep everyone at bay. Even though they were supposed to have graduated the previous Spring. No one questioned it, like the good minions they were. 

But Quentin’s room, ordinary and at the far end of the hallway where it could easily be partitioned off, had turned into either a shrine to his memory - or the newest Brakebill’s ghost story. Whoever started it to scare a handful of first years probably had no idea the power a good story of a legitimate sounding haunting could have. It had grown wings and fucking flown. Some of the teachers might have even fallen for it. However, this turned both into a blessing and a burden for Eliot - because he needed a space that Q had occupied a lot for the complicated spells he was about to do. But actually physically walking into the room, which really hadn’t been touched since Alice had gone through it six months previous before the bonfire, was not something he had been prepared for. Alice was usually so meticulous, he expected it to be boxed up and stripped, bare of all belongings and ready for the next student to occupy it. 

He didn’t expect to almost trip over one of Q’s hoodies on the floor. For his Fillory and Further first editions to still be lining the bookcase with his textbooks and school notes, his clothes in the dresser drawers and shoes kicked off haphazardly on the side of the bed he usually slept in. Eliot actually blinked at the unmade bed, sheets pulled this way and that like Q had tossed and turned the whole time, because only one half of the bed was a mess. He couldn’t for the life of him remember if Quentin used to always sleep like this, or spread out like a fucking starfish, before everything happened in their alternate life. Eliot’s side of the bed, the left side that would have faced away from the rising sun so he could sleep in during the mornings by the mosaic, was barely touched. 50 years was a long time, a lot of muscle memory that had nothing to do with the bodies they inhabited - instinct left a spot for him in Quentin’s bed. 

Eliot hadn’t done a lot of sleeping in beds since Quentin had died. He wondered if he unconsciously did the same. 

“I think I’ve got everything,” a voice said literally right behind him and almost in his ear, jarring Eliot back to Earth at the speed of a heart attack.

“Jesus fucking Christ, Todd!” he barked out sharply, glaring at the other and secretly praying he hadn’t noticed how much Eliot had been spacing out just staring at Quentin’s bed. “I’m going to put a damn bell on you.”

“I said your name first,” Todd said, confused, but very obviously taking in Eliot’s raccoon circles and overgrown hair, unkempt clothes and scuffed up shoes, all the way down to his collection of about a week’s worth of 5 o’clock shadow. “You okay, man?”

“No, Todd, I’m not,” Eliot said, still snappish but running his hands down his face to help wake his ass up and ground him in the present. “But I will be. Put everything on the desk - if you can find space.”

“Is there even enough room in here to do a casting like this?” Todd pried, putting the crate of glass jars and books and other odds and ends Eliot was going to need on top of Quentin’s year old horomancy notes. “I know plenty of other places around here that would give you more wiggle room.” Eliot closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose - truth be told, Todd wasn’t nearly as aggravating as he used to be. He was in his final year, had done multiple work studies and internships including his one as Dean Fogg’s assistant, and he did in fact now know more about Brakebills than Eliot or anyone else. He’d known where everything was, obscure and questionable items that they were, that Eliot needed for his spell and had retrieved them in record time. But old habits die hard, and Eliot would probably always have his hackles up around Todd - no matter how helpful he could be.

“It has to be here,” Eliot insisted, attempting to not clench his jaw and speak each word through his teeth. “No where else is saturated enough.” He exhaled and used all his pent up emotions to boost his telekinesis - since it wanted so badly to come out and play lately - heaving the bed onto its side and up against the far wall, blocking off the closet and almost sealing off the doorway. Table and lamps followed it, ripping them roughly from the outlets and casting the room in shadows save for the sunlight spilling through the thin curtains. All without lifting a finger. Todd’s eyes were the size of dinner plates and Eliot felt himself relax a bit.

“Gotcha,” Todd drew out slowly, looking from Eliot to the underside of the bed now facing them a few times. “This… has something to do with Quentin, doesn’t it?”

“Whatever gave you that idea,” Eliot said airily, turning to pick through the crate of supplies and begin setting up his work space. With a flick of his hand the dust and years of who-knew-what that had gathered under the bed was blown against the far wall as well, creating a giant empty area in the center of the room. Perfect. 

“I never got to say,” Todd began, still standing between Eliot and the door like he might need to beat a hasty retreat, but his earnest tone was the most un-Todd-like thing and it made Eliot look up at him. “Back when it happened, how sorry I was. I know he was your best friend, it sucks what happened.”

Eliot paused, and for once no scathing remarks broke to the surface in response. One year ago he would have sent Todd away in tears with whatever defensive words came up on his barbed tongue. But not this time. “Thanks, Todd.” It was all he could manage. “And for this, too. Do me a favor and keep everyone out of this room. If anyone opens the door I don’t know what will happen.” That part was also true. Integrity had always been one of his key traits, to a fault he wasn’t too proud to say. 

“What are you going to do?” Todd asked, warily eyeing the crate - which had a lot of raw elements and rare items that probably shouldn’t be used in a spell that’s within 100 miles of another human being. 

“Copying Margo’s homework, like usual,” Eliot quipped, flipping open a book that he had brought with him from The Library. When Todd hadn’t moved at his answer, he glanced at him with a look that clearly said _you wouldn’t understand,_ but the other was nothing if not persistent. “I’m making a spirit jar. Now shoo.” The blank look made it clear Todd in fact did not understand, but he slowly turned and left the room anyway, thankfully. Eliot huffed a sigh and skimmed the pages he’d earmarked that showed a very detailed drawing of the interior of one of the spirit jars Margo had brought back from the desert. According to her, this was what they had used to capture and hold the Monsters once they were expelled from his body and Julia’s. It held the creatures across worlds and realities, including the Mirror World, so if anything was going to hold up and be able to safely carry Quentin’s soul from the Underworld and through the Library as well as the Fillory fountain - this was going to be it. 

The only problem was that they had used both of the jars in their epic, world-saving endeavor and Fillory was now stuck 300 years in the future. The chance that Eliot would even physically make it to the nomadic tribe in the middle of the desert, or that they were still around and had spirit jars after Margo had gone all Prince of Egypt before she left was so slim it was laughable. So plan B, Eliot had to make his own - or the closest thing he could find.

Spirit jars were the most fickle-bitches on the damn planet. Or any planet. Eliot, being a fellow fickle-as-shit entity, could know one when he saw one and had spent _hours_ figuring out how to make the spells work. To make the ingredients, which when combined could turn Brakebills into a fucking crater in the ground, combine inside the jar without destroying all of Upstate New York. The main catalyst was oxygen, so unless he flew to space this was going to be near impossible. 

Then, in a fit of madness after he hit triple digits of next to no sleep, Eliot thought to himself - _why the fuck not_? Flying to space was a little extra, he’d known a few people who had tried as their senior projects, but why in the world couldn’t he just bring space to him? He was fucking telekinetic, half of the work wasn’t even going to require spell casting, just a careful release of his normal magical adept abilities. Simple. 

Simple as _shit_.

But here he was, in Quentin’s bedroom, about to seal off the room entirely and void it of oxygen while simultaneously creating his very own magical oxygen tank so he didn’t die in the vacuum he was about to create. It sure sounded cool, though. 

-

An hour later found Eliot sitting cross-legged inside a circle of pure chunks of sea salt, jars of every pure element and ingredient he needed to his right, and his notes and an open book to his left. The golden jar that looked far too much like an urn for comfort was on the hardwood in front of him, and Eliot was doing his best to breathe deep and savor the sweet taste of fresh air before he did the most complicated and stupid spell he’d ever witnessed in his life. He recalled telling the first years during the trials that the spell they had been given was practically impossible, and knew this was some kind of ‘Just Desserts’ for choosing that damn spell. He couldn’t even cheat, there was no one to cheat off of. 

With a huff that was more frustration than an exhale, Eliot raised his hands in front of him and tried to picture the spell formation map as best he could. The drawing was so complex it was like some shit out of Full-Metal Alchemist, and he just hoped he could cast fast enough before his organs failed in his chest. Long fingers wrapped in rings he never left home without, bent in angles and shapes that he wouldn’t have been able to do 12 hours before, flew at a speed Margo would raise an eyebrow at. No time for pausing and correction, one misstep or cramped up joint and he’d be choking on nothing on the floor. 

But even with how fast he cast, Eliot could feel the tightening in his lungs, how his eyes felt too big for his skull and began to water, and every nerve ending was strung taut as a bow. His fingertips were going numb as he moved through the last five phases, but the moment the spell completed and his entire body was enclosed in a skin-tight seal he couldn’t describe it as anything other than euphoric. He was off the floor, not entirely sure when he’d left it, limbs and torso buoyed in the air and as he unraveled from the tight stance he’d found himself in as he focused on casting and not fucking up. This spell was so out of his league, what the hell had he been thinking? In fact, if he hadn’t felt the peppermint-fresh coolness of air on his tongue as he spiraled backwards and fireworks went off behind his eyelids - he’d think he had died and this was just the last few moments of his brain trying to make sense of the void he’d created. The room was emptied of all air, the table and bed were hovering and Eliot laughed to himself that he hadn’t thought to tie anything down - including the glass jars holding his ingredients, or the book which was already off the page he had marked. The lack of oxygen to his brain that was now greedily gulping what the spell conjured made everything lighter, easier, and he couldn’t help but miss drugs and alcohol _terribly_ in that moment. 

It took barely any thought to maneuver the furniture and supplies back into place. Eliot’s telekinesis was running free-range now, in its element as he tried to tether himself back closer to the ground as well. But it felt so good to levitate and move himself without so much as twitching a muscle, the hind part of his brain that was used mainly for sex and other instinctual prowess was - in a Magician - tapped into their base abilities. What caused magic to flow through and affect them, that allowed them to manipulate it in the science and study every Magician strives to perfect. To give in to that ability, that natural instinct, could be dangerous for many. It depended what that core power was. But for Eliot moving things with his mind was more natural than breathing. It took great effort and control to not do it everyday, and he prided himself in that level of mastery. 

And now he relished in letting it go. Using it to further his magical limits and stretch what he was fucking capable of. Oh, what he could be capable of when he set his mind to it.

The look on concentration and fortitude on his face did not match how tired and worn down he looked. He wasn’t just on his second wind, he was on his fourth or fifth, and he was going to ride it all the way to the end. Q was counting on him. Eliot didn’t think he actually had it in him to fail that man, not after everything they’d been through. He’d die first. 

-

_New York City; the Hedgewitch Black Market_

-

Kady didn’t know when she lost Julia in the maze of hallways beneath the Black Market, or how long she ran after the man she knew for a fact was apart of the group they were after. She’d met him before, months ago after first arriving in Mumbai, and even back then his slick words and too wide smile had made her stomach queasy. She had let slip, in that very first meeting, that she was from New York and a little about the Hedgewitch scene there - the epicenter of all things underground and magical. Kady just hadn’t expected for the underground factor to be so literal.

The man, Douchewad #5 as far as she was concerned for he was one of the more inexperienced in the group and least likely to contribute much, found the exit door he was looking for at long last. There was no saying how many doorways they had actually passed or where they led to, with various degrees of magic emanating from them to the point they could have been strong enough to hold portals. The door had no distinguishing markers to separate it from all the rest, rusted and metal with fake wood paneling in some places, which made Kady even more wary of the wild goose chase he had just dragged her on. He had been there before, with enough time to memorize the labyrinth that lay beneath and make a plan. This was probably a trap, it felt like a trap, but if Kady could just gain another ten feet on the guy she could snag that stupid NYC logo hoodie and put him in the floor. She was close enough now that she only needed a long stretch of hallway and some of her old level one battle magic would probably suffice in ending the hunt.

But then he found his door, and opened it as quickly as he was able - it was heavy, with a pressurized stopper to keep it from slamming that made it harder to open quickly. He barely made it through the opening before Kady slammed her shoulder into the door, hard, and with enough force running at a break-neck speed to send Douchewad to the floor in the darkness. Rain spit from the sky, clouds seeming to have rolled in from nowhere and evening beginning to set far beyond the high city buildings. It was dark in the shadow of the warehouses, the smell of the Hudson melding into the rain and damp concrete, but to Kady the fresh air after being in the hallways was more energizing than anything. They were at the base of a sloped hill, blocks of buildings behind them and the river not another 100 yards from where the alleyway ended. Underground, but not quite. Kady had the guy pinned, her knee in his back between his shoulder blades and his face pressed to the gritty asphalt, as she looked up and scanned the area for any other movement. If he had led her here as a trap, his backup should have been there waiting to ambush her. But there was no one.

“What was your plan, huh?” she asked, also panting for breath but a smile pulled at her parted lips. “Did they ditch you?” She was still looking, expecting someone to meld out of the shadows at any moment, especially as the rain began to fall more steadily and the sun set further behind the towering buildings. “You can’t be dumb enough to think I wouldn’t have been staking out the place, I’m the one that told you about it Silas.” 

“You were not there earlier,” he managed to say, his lungs straining against his ribs as Kady kept him pinned down. She reached down and tugged his arm behind his back to pin beneath her boot as well, he probably couldn’t cast without her noticing but she wasn’t going to chance it. 

“Everyone here is one of mine, you dumbass. You’ve pissed off a lot of people with your plan, no one wants the world to know who we are and what we can do,” she spit out, managing to cast a handcuff charm of her own design that also kept his ass pinned to the ground. As soon as she was able to stand and fish out her phone, Kady shot off a text to Pete and Naomi where she was at, then called Julia. Her phone went straight to voicemail, and Kady’s chest tightened in panic. If she was still underground, she might be out of service.

Thank fuck she was a damn good Magician.

Pete pulled up in a very pedophile-of-the-month looking white van, and Kady gave him a look and a sneer as he hopped out to inspect their captured fugitive. “Where they out of creepy ice cream trucks?”

“Well a black van would have been more on brand with kidnapping, but I didn’t want to draw too much attention,” Pete told her with a quirk of a smile of his own. “So who is he?”

“Silas O’Hara, lower level shithead from London that wanted an in with Russia or Iran and had no idea they were probably the two countries least likely to want anything to do with the non-magical world,” Kady said, looking down on the man at her feet as she tried Julia’s cell once more. Voicemail.

“So an idiot,” Pete concluded.

“Massive idiot,” Kady agreed, frowning at her phone.

“I can hear you,” Silas said, voice muffled by his face still pressed heavily to the ground by the spell.

“Good, maybe you’ll remember it when Pete is prying off your fingernails to make you talk.”

“Wait, what?” Silas shrieked into the ground.

“Yeah, what?” Pete asked with an incredulous look. “What makes you think _I’m_ doing it?”

“Fine, whoever sketchy friend you have in the back of your van that’s licking his chops,” Kady muttered. “Or so I assume.”

“I was just going to scare him, but if you’re giving the green light-” 

“No, don’t make me come after you,” Kady snapped, her fifth call falling through in a row. “Shit. I need to go back in and find Julia,” she pocketed her phone while Pete watched with disinterest.

“You brought her here?”

“And lost her during the chase, now I can’t reach her, tell Naomi to keep an eye out and _don’t_ kill him Pete!” she shouted, pointing menacingly as she ran back towards the building and pushed her way through the doors. Ignoring the screams of Silas to not be left behind with Pete the creep. Godspeed to them both.

-

There was so much magic filling the hallways; creeping under doorways and collecting in corners, like a gas leak that had much more positive effects on her body than it should. It crackled at her fingertips as she walked the corridors with her thumb and pointer-finger folded together, framing a diamond shape and inspecting the wards and free range magic flowing everywhere. Kady wasn’t quite sure what she was looking for, with so much interference it might be a futile attempt anyway, but it was better than wandering the maze and shouting Julia’s name so loud it echoed painfully. 

She searched for hours.

Close to midnight her phone buzzed, an incoming call from Pete, effectively eliminating her theory that Julia was in a dead zone where her phone was useless. “What,” she snapped, dropping her hands to break the casting and wiping the sweat from her face. She’d held the spell for far longer than anyone she’d ever known to. It wasn’t meant to be cast for hours on end.

“He sang like a bird,” Pete said, dismissing her anger as if he hadn’t heard it at all. “No spine.”

“Good for us,” Kady mumbled, not stopping her trek through the halls despite how it all looked the same as every other fucking hall and floor and line of doors in the rest of the buildings. 

“Very good. We know where the channel is they are planning to tap, both here and in Geneva, apparently they were planning on hitting the world trade center here as well.”

“ _Fuck._ That would not have gone over well,” Kady exhaled, running her free hand through her wild hair and trying not to think about the backlash that would have caused. 9/11 had been almost two decades ago, but it was still a tender spot in the American psyche and especially to New Yorkers. If they wanted to hit where it hurts they had picked the perfect target.

“Yeah, glad you tackled him when you did. I’ve got a group of our best on their way to their hotel room uptown, and another keeping watch at ground zero. You’ll never believe where the channel is here in New York,” he chuckled, and Kady felt her steps slow as a pulsating energy called to her from an adjacent hallway. A doorway that she would have missed if she hadn’t been looking into every nook and cranny, and her stomach dropped. Because of course.

“Beneath the Black Market,” she muttered, not a question but a realization.

“Yeah… how did you know?”

“Just a hunch.”

“You find Julia yet?” Pete asked.

“I’ll know the answer to that in about two minutes,” Kady said distractedly. “I’ll call you back. Good work.” She hung up without taking her eyes off the door, and stepped up to toe at the threshold. Something was telling her it was a very bad idea to open the set of doors in front of her, but another gut instinct told her that Julia was in there somewhere. That she might need help, or at least a guiding hand to leave it. With the amount of magic that was seeping under the doorframe, so palpable it was almost visible, she could be unconscious. Or dead. Kady couldn’t risk it.

Beyond the door, a shushed kind of quiet echoed far ahead into a dark tunnel larger than the hallways surrounding her, the magical currents was so thick Kady choked. She summoned a floating light, the surrounding magic clinging to it like a magnet and brightening the sphere until it was a tiny floating sun. The entire tunnel was as visible as a daylight photograph, and Kady immediately recognized it as a subway tunnel. Long abandoned, but still holding wiring and tracks and city logos printed on the walls. 

And at the far end, there was a figure standing, not facing her but a turn in the tunnel. Even from the distance of the doorway, a good 50 or 60 yards, Kady could tell it was Julia.

“Turn it down,” Julia said, her voice carrying with chilling clarity the vast amount of distance, and Kady did her best to oblige. Dimming the sphere until it took more effort to hold it in existence than to hold the light. She tried not to run down the tunnel to Julia, who still hadn’t looked at her, and as she approached she had to wonder what the hell happened to her. There was the same pulsating feeling coming from her entire body, as if Kady could feel Julia’s heartbeat from where she stood, and her clothes had the loose ragged quality of being soaked but now dry, as did her wavy hair. Mascara and eyeliner circled the bottom of her eyes and trailed down her face, from tears or sweat Kady couldn’t tell, and she wanted to so baldy reach out and touch Julia. To make her turn and look Kady in the eyes, to see if she was alright, but some deep primal instinct told her not to. 

“Jules, are you okay?” she asked, her voice betraying her more than the expression on her face. Julia was scaring her, especially at the distant smile that quirked the side of her mouth at her words.

“Quentin was the first one to call me Jules,” she said, so absently Kady wasn’t even sure she was aware she was beside her.

“Julia, are you okay?” Kady asked more firmly, coming as close to her as she could without the warning bells in her head going off louder than they already were. 

“I’m fine,” Julia said. “Better than fine.” Her eyes were trained on the darkness of a turn in the tunnel, and Kady’s faint floating light didn’t illuminate it further than five or six feet in.

“I’ve been looking for you for hours,” Kady said breathlessly, too scared and relieved to be angry. Too many emotions battling to be much of anything. Even curiosity was muted, as she looked into the darkness more than once to try and see what Julia was staring at so intently. 

“I’m sorry, I was talking to Persephone. Time didn’t bend well to our conversation.”

“ _Persephone_?” Kady asked. “Wait, you mean… isn’t she Our Lady Underground? I thought she was dead.” Julia had told her about how the Monster had killed the goddess when Julia had called upon her to save her from being possessed by the Monster-sister. In vain, of course. The Monsters were too powerful. 

“She was, right in front of my eyes. But Persephone is married to the god of the underworld. Hades has her secured in their palace there. Where else was she supposed to go? Detroit?” Julia smirked, finally looking at Kady and the other woman breathed for what felt like the first time in hours. If Julia was making South Park jokes then she was truly still herself, somewhere in there.

Before Kady could ask her any more on her conversation, a low guttural sound came from in front of them - far back within the darkness. It was so deep in bass that it vibrated through her chest, and Kady’s heart stopped in fear. She slowly turned to look into the darkness, as did Julia but with far less trepidation, and deep in the shadows Kady saw the outline of something very large coming closer. Thick, muscled shoulders on a very feline body rolling as it stalked forward footfall by silent footfall, and soon the pale light of her sphere was reflecting on giant green-yellow eyes.

Kady didn’t even dare speak.

“Persephone told me as much as she could, from her house arrest situation,” Julia continued as if a cat the size of a fucking horse wasn’t closing in on them. “We have a much bigger problem, that umbrellas out to most of our others.” The cat came forward, it’s fur spotted and striped and colored strangely. It was like nothing Kady had ever seen before, and as terrifying as it’s size was - the sentience in its eyes was the most upsetting. She expected it to open its mouth a speak, and it could very obviously understand what Julia was saying as much as it understood the expressions on their faces. “This is a Civet,” Julia said with another smile, the cat creature coming into the light and it’s line of sight when it stood straight went over both of their heads with ease. “She’s from Fillory.” Kady’s terrified gaze snapped to Julia, eyes staying just as wide.

“How did it get here?” she asked, her voice quiet and hesitant. 

“The worlds are bleeding into each other,” Julia said gravely, reaching up just as the cat lowered it’s head and scratched behind it’s big rounded ears, the soft appendages the size of dinner plates. “We’ve been speaking to each other, and I passed through an underground village filled with all kinds of creatures not from Earth. I promised her I’d help get her home,” Julia said, and the creature looked grateful as the guttural sound continued - mimicking a purr but so deep and loud it felt like a motorcycle engine in it’s chest. “The world has to break first.”

“Break?” Kady asked, still breathless but her fear was ebbing away at the sight of Julia and her befriended Fillorian cat creature.

“Yes. The world’s are bleeding all their own, making a mess as they spill into each other, but only a Magician can break them cleanly.” She looked to Kady then, the same distant and wise look in her eyes that Kady remembered when she was goddess. “Sometimes things need to break in order to reform and heal anew. That time is now. We’ve seen what happens when it doesn’t.”

“Who is strong enough to break a world?” Kady asked, not sure she even understood the question as she spoke it. What did it mean for a world to break? “You?”

“Not alone.” 

“What does that mean?”

Julia just smiled, a true smile that looked more like herself - quiet and knowing and ready for the next step. Whatever it may be. “I guess we’ll see.” 

Kady had a feeling Julia already knew the answer.

-

_Brakebills; The Physical Kids Cottage_

-

“What do you mean we can’t see him?” Margo inquired in a tone that sounded entirely too deadly to just be mere words.

“That’s what he said!” Todd insisted, eyes wide and already keeping a good couple yards between himself and Margo’s incredulous stare. “He’s been up there for like 10 hours, and he said no one was to go inside because he didn’t know what would happen if the spell was interrupted.” Todd’s frightened look darted between Margo and Alice and Penny, possibly hoping for aide from one of the other two that had been in his year. “Some of the stuff he was using, I believe him. It’s too dangerous.”

“He could be dead, Todd!” Margo snapped. 

“10 hours is too long, man,” Penny shook his head, also glaring a bit at the man. 

“You could have at least checked on him,” Margo continued as she rounded the center bar of the Physical Kids Cottage to head for the stairs.

“I did! I wouldn’t just ditch him!” Todd yelled after her as he rounded the stairs too. “Seriously, Margo, don’t go in there! I knocked on the door every couple hours, he answered each time - he’s fine. Pissed at me, but that’s nothing new.” That stalled Margo on the landing, much to Todd’s obvious relief. 

“How could anything he’d be doing be that dangerous?” Alice questioned. “He’s making a spirit jar, I know it’s probably complex but hardly dangerous.”

“Well he’s using pure boron, iron ores, and powder-fine griffin bone,” Todd explained. “Along with a bunch of other shit. You don’t see that outside of making nuclear bombs.”

Alice stared. “If that were true we would all be dead right now.” Penny started beside her and she shushed him. “You can’t combine fine powder griffin bone and pure boron in an oxygenated environment, it’ll explode on impact.” Todd just shrugged, not sure what to tell her, because the chances that Eliot had been combining his ingredients and hadn’t mixed those two in the past 10 hours wasn’t very high. Alice’s eyes brightened, suddenly and unexpectedly, and then she was racing up the stairs past Margo and down the hall to Quentin’s room. 

“Alice don’t!” Todd shouted, everyone on her heels, but not before she cast a shielding charm that trapped the room in it’s own bubble.

“If he’s casting in zero gravity I need to see it,” Alice told them, eyes bright not from fear - but excitement. “Eliot’s a telekinetic, he wouldn’t have to deal with half the castings that would normally call for that to work. I’m watching.”

“Kinky,” Margo muttered before she could stop herself, and watched Alice throw open the door and lean as close as she could without pressing against the barrier she’d created. Like a small child at the zoo.

“What the hell, Todd?” Eliot near screeched, not able to look away from the bright spell formation map that was being cast visibly in front of him. An addition of his own design. He must have been doing so to make sure it was done correctly before it was completed, it was so complex it was hard to make out the separate components from across the room. Over his head, spaced in an arch with a good eight inches between each part, were the ingredients that had been in jars previously. Each collection of material had its own spell formation map, visible so Eliot could double check his work, and the arch went right over his head to the floor in front of him where the golden urn lay open and waiting. “Are you trying to get us killed?”

“You’re sealed inside,” Alice told him, gaze calculating as she took in each component of the scene in front of her. 

“He did good until Alice bum-rushed him,” Margo said in monotone. “10 hours, El? Really?”

“Bambi, Daddy is working,” Eliot droned with an annoyed lilt to his voice, still not looking at them as he continued to cast. The spell looked like a glowing, golden macrame hovering over the top of the open urn, a spider’s web of pure magic. 

“You look like you’re almost done,” Alice mentioned, a little in awe of the genius innovation. Separating each component into its own compartmentalized spell, making an assembly line that could be combined in a single instant instead of slowly over hundreds of years - like the spell called for. Had Eliot, _their_ Eliot, really come up with this? “How’re you-”

“Just a few more minutes and I’ll take you kids out for ice cream. Just quiet, please,” Eliot said, piecing together the last few strings of the web and then finally sitting up straighter with a sigh. Two of the strings were still attached to a finger on each hand, and he took a couple breaths before moving again. 

His natural levitation within the zero gravity space allowed him to roll his entire body backwards, in an arch that was physically impossible anywhere else on Earth, until he had stretched the strings all the way to the first element in the semi-circle over his head. With a twist of his hands in the air, a fluttering of his fingers, and a few loops the threads created a pattern much like cat’s cradle woven around his fingers and stretched a foot apart. He took another moment to breathe deep and settle himself, the four in the doorway silent and staring.

Then, without warning, Eliot snapped forward in a near parallel arch to the ingredients spaced above his head. The spell stretched between his hands caught every single one in succession, taking less than five seconds to complete the downward slam straight through the complicated spell web and into the golden jar. The lid slammed shut behind it, no spell they could see having done so, and Eliot kept it there with his telekinesis alone. Like a finger holding down a ribbon as he tied a bow.

The bow in this metaphor being another twenty-sequence casting that would effectively seal the spell within the jar as it worked it’s magic (ha). Combining and mixing in ways that would not be possible anywhere other than zero gravity, but still a long-shot in it’s stability. All they could do was wait with baited breath and hope it stabilized enough to allow oxygen back into the room. Eliot didn’t take his eyes off it as the whole jar glowed brightly, casting shadows against his face. His hair was soaked with sweat, beaded on his forehead and dampening his clothes, but he had done it. 10 fucking hours of torturous, tedious concentration - but he’d fucking done it, and Alice was grinning like a loon that she got to witness it. 

“So… how the fuck were the desert people in Fillory able to make this shit?” Penny finally asked to break the silence. “They don’t exactly go to space. Or levitate.”

“It takes hundreds of years,” Margo explained, impressed but still worriedly annoyed at Eliot’s accomplishment. “Eliot did it in less than a day. Shortcuts have consequences.” No one wanted to ask what those consequences might entail, not until they were sure the whole cottage wasn’t about to blow up. But the golden glow around the urn finally began to subside, throbbing like a heartbeat until it slowed and faded entirely. The collective exhale was audible, and Eliot finally looked up to his friends in the doorway watching him do what should have been impossible.

“You’re an idiot,” Margo told him. But she was proud. Eliot was capable of more than he knew.

-

Eliot didn’t let go of the jar once he left Quentin’s room, sitting on their couch by his custom bar, cradling the thing close to his chest and zoning out as the exhaustion threatened to set in.

“You gonna set it down?” Todd asked, trying to hand him a drink (he’d taken over hosting duties the past year, in Margo and Eliot’s absence, and made a mean Old Fashioned - Eliot hated to admit) but Eliot wouldn’t release his hold on the jar to reach for the glass. 

“Not a chance,” Eliot droned, a delayed look to Todd that was not near as sharp as it should have been betraying how run down he was. “If this thing breaks, we won’t have to worry about saving Quentin cause we’ll end up right there with him. Along with all of Upstate New York.” Todd froze at the statement, then nodded and just drank the mixed cocktail in one go himself, turning to leave them to it. 

“So what next?” Penny asked, referring to Eliot’s plan.

“Sleep,” Margo stated, with no room for argument.

“No sleep,” Eliot replied, just as serious.

“I will knock your ass out, El,” Margo began to threaten.

“Actually, he’s right,” Alice added, catching Margo’s glare at full force. “We’re on a clock. We don’t know how long until Fillory starts losing magic, so if we want to do the witch’s resurrection spell then we need to do it as soon as possible.”

“See, sleep after,” Eliot chided, smiling gently at Margo although it should have been taunting. “More espresso, and I’ll be good.”

“Good to do what?” Margo sneered.

“Get Q, that’s next,” Eliot said, sitting up and trying to shake himself out of his daze. “It’s going to take like 3 or 4 people to get Quentin’s soul in this jar, I cut corners. Had to, time crunch.”

“Glad you thought of everything,” Margo muttered, not lessening her agitation in her tone. “So how do you fetch our dearly departed?”

“Oh, Bambi,” Eliot smiled, this time with more teeth and mirth than she had been expecting. “That’s where you come in. He needs a spirit guide, and who better than you?” 

Margo stared hard, expression stone cold to conceal her shock. “And how, pray tell, do I fucking do that?”

The grin Eliot sported grew, rivaling a shark’s in its sharpness. 

“I know how much you loved your semester trying to master astral projection-”

“I _failed_ that semester, El!” Margo spat.

“This time you’ll have help,” Eliot leaned in close and pointed right at her eye. Too close, Margo fought inch for inch to not pull away as he indicated the fairy eye in her skull. It always had a pupil that was just a tiny bit larger than her normal one. “ _That_ transcends realms, and you’ll be able to see Q clearly in the Anti-Verse without the extra add-ons for us normal sighted people.”

“You’re getting very good at finding ways to utilize what we’ve got,” Alice said from where she sat perched on the arm of another couch. Continuing to be impressed with Eliot. “Maybe no sleep is good for you.”

“Let’s put a pin in that,” Eliot said, turning to point his finger in Alice’s direction instead. “I like sleep; sleep and I have been together for a very long time and I miss it terribly. A committed relationship. When the world is safe and the skies are clear I’m sleeping for a month.” He was very serious about that statement, one arm still holding the urn close to his chest as the other hovered in front of him. Then his face broke into a smile, and one of his airy, entertainment laughs escaped him, “But thank you, it feels good to be appreciated.” He didn’t have to look at Margo to see her scowl at his barb.

“Then what?” she needled, arms crossed but not moving from where she sat pressed to Eliot’s side. 

“Then - we will see, balls in the air,” Eliot admitted without a hint of remorse. “I have it mostly planned out, don’t look at me like that Bambi,” he said in defense that had no bite, not even at Margo’s incredulous expression. “Now, to The Library!” he shouted with a burst of false energy that seemingly came from nowhere, rising to his feet and wavering on them. “I have a date with P40, and you need to go play follow the leader with Q.” 

“What about us?” Alice asked, also standing up - the three ignoring Penny as he opened his mouth to protest.

“ _Us?_ ”

“Yes, you two, I have a very urgent errand that needs running and it needs to be done soon,” Eliot said, and Alice had the feeling that if he hadn’t been holding the urn then he would have been rubbing his hands together like an old school villain. “How are you around spiders?”

\--


	8. Episode 508, Part I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, if this chapter seems shorter than some others that's because it is. About 1k shorter. Originally this was going to end up being another 20k monster, but during edits the last 2 days I realized it would be _much_ longer than that and I needed to move some stuff around. 
> 
> **Edit:** So after even more consideration and sleeping on it, I'm going to keep doing my edits (which always include adding scenes and increasing my word count exponentially) aaaand this may or may not turn into a two parter. I will still be updating on Saturday, but it may say "508, Part II" when I do. I'll try to change the title here before that if I come to the decision before then.
> 
> TW/Episode Notes:  
> \- We're back on lots of talking about death, life after death, all that it entails. I even get a little bit into some ghostly stuff, since technically Quentin _is_ a ghost, sort of. And his suicide, because that's very important to his death in general.  
> \- Naturally, this pairs with some angst from a few parties, so prepare for that as well.  
> \- A few parts get a little... silly, I guess is the best word. But I mean, we've seen two books having sex on the show there's not much I can do that will beat what they've come up with. But in comparison to the rest of the content I've written, yeah it gets a little silly. But it's bookmarked by serious conversations so that'll either help or give you whiplash. Sorry if it's the later.  
> \- I rushed my edits a bit, because I only got to go through it once before I decided (like an hour ago) to cut off a chunk of the end and paste it at the beginning of next chapter/episode. So all of the typos, any inconsistencies, my terrible horrible spelling, just all of it is my fault and I apologize for it. I hope the chapter doesn't seem rushed/incomplete either, I tried to round it out a little to make it still feel like an episode - but it is missing the last half/third so I did my best.
> 
> Thank you so much for your time and dedication, the lovely comments that keep me going, and for continuing to read my story. I hope you enjoy this episode.

\--

Episode 508: The Gang Plays 'Pass the Dead Magician' 

\--

_The Anti-Verse; Fillory_

-

The pocketwatch fit perfectly in the palm of Quentin’s hand, although it no longer spun out of control. It ticked by, precise intervals creating a pulse that vibrated through his fingers and wrist. Without blood moving through his veins, Quentin could feel the tender vibrations through the tendons stretched there - could imagine what it would feel like to have it pulsating throughout his whole body once more. The entire time he’s been dead he hadn’t actually longed to be alive again, not in the sense of inhaling and exhaling and being within a world of other living things. He longed for his friends, for the things that had happened in the past that he couldn’t change, for the chance to save their future. But until his talk with Eliot he hadn’t included himself in that vision. Hadn’t had a chance to sit down and really consider the fact that he was going to live again, and everything that would entail. Everything that he no longer possessed.

The dead didn’t long to be alive until it was thrust upon them, it seemed. Once it was, however, it was all he could think about.

He missed his fucking heartbeat.

He missed how it would race when he was scared for his life or when he leaned close to someone he loved. He missed how it would rush through him and make his hands tremble when he got to an exciting part in a novel, or when he mastered a spell casting for the first time. How it slowly ebbed and flowed when he lay in bed, warm and sloth-like. How he could hear it in his ears, even when he was in a place so quiet and lonely it was all he could hear. His heartbeat never left him. Which made sense, it was what reminded him he was alive when he was at his lowest and couldn’t fathom how he could possibly still exist. 

Now, all he had was this pocketwatch in his hand. With a crystal face and thin black hands ticking around and around. A physical representation of his hope that he would feel his heartbeat again, and for the longest time he couldn’t bring himself to look away.

“Дробна драбніца, дробна драбніца, Дробны дожджык лье,” Bacchus sang from where he lounged on one of the settees in the High King’s chambers, a bottle of Eliot’s attempts at Champagne in one fist and a very stale cigarette between the fingers of the other. His head was tilted all the way to the ceiling and he crooned to the heavens (or whatever was above them) what could only be a very old drinking song. “Сабралася бедна басота’ Ды гарэлку п’е.”

“Any idea what he’s saying?” Quentin asked, sitting on the edge of the giant poster bed that still had Eliot’s custom-made quilts and comforters embroidered with real gold and silver thread. It had become an heirloom, apparently, since it was one with the room’s decor and Eliot hadn’t been High King in who knew how long. Fillory’s time in comparison to Earth was always a constantly changing variable. 

“It’s Belarusian, I know that much,” Eliza told him, swirling the yellowed champagne around a delicate crystal glass that Quentin remembered bringing from Earth years ago, back when Eliot had been stuck in Fillory after his arranged payment marriage to Fen. “Something about ne’er-do’well’s gathering together to drink their woes away, and threatening to beat up anyone who berates them for being drunk.”

That was pretty on brand for Bacchus, and Quentin huffed a humorless laugh. “I learned the hard way to never stop a god when he’s partying.”

“Damn straight!” Bacchus shouted mid-verse. “You were such a fucking downer.”

“We were trying to restore magic, it was kind of important,” Quentin said incredulously, hands spread in disbelief. Seriously? Was now really the time to be strolling down memory lane?

“I hate to point it out, but you seem to be right back where you started,” Eliza said with a smirk. 

“We haven’t _lost_ magic, yet,” Quentin defended, though he sounded like his heart wasn’t in it. “El wouldn’t have been able to reach out to me if it was gone. But I bet this time it’s a little more permanent, and I doubt there’s a second backdoor somewhere in Fillory.”

“It would make that contraption a little useless as well,” Eliza said, nodding to the pocketwatch ticking away in Quentin’s hand. It no longer showed the location spell fused to the quartz clock face, but Q could still see it there in his mind’s eye - like it had been burned into his retinas. It was still there, and they could still find him. He had to believe that.

“We can’t be too late,” he muttered, back to staring intently at the watch as it ticked seconds by faithfully. “I got here as fast as I could. I don’t even know what to do with it now.”

Eliza considered him a few moments, before sighing as she sat up and placed her glass down carefully. Leaning forward from her lounge seat to look Quentin in the eye, composed and as reassuring as she could be. “Quentin, you’re focusing on all the wrong things. Just be content that you even found it, and in the fact that it’s important. Iris said it’s the key. Keys look small and ordinary, chunks of metal with a special pattern carved into one spot, but they can open so many powerful and precious things. They also lock away horrors - dangerous and terrible things from the world. Remember that when you finally find the lock it fits.” She eyed the small silver watch cautiously, with the appraisal of someone who knew much on the subject. More than enough to see the whole picture. “At least it isn’t broken, or dead like the others. That means something too.”

“Even broken clocks are right twice a day,” Quentin recited, an old proverb one of his undergrad professors quotes often. He looked up to Eliza’s shocked and thoughtful expression, surprised that he stunned her into silence. She hummed once she caught herself, resettling where she sat to hide that fact, and tucking her crossed ankles under the arm chair as she sipped delicately at the (possibly spoiled and very flat) champagne. Looking off as if Q had given her much to think about.

“So what now?” Bacchus asked too loudly, lulling his head forward again to look at the two of them from across the room. “What are we waiting for? Another adventure?”

“To where? We found what we were looking for,” Eliza stated, glancing at Quentin who had gone back to inspecting the pocketwatch. He had already stated he had no idea what to do next except wait. “And your dear sister didn’t give us further instructions. It’d be nice if that thing came with a map.”

“How about a guide?”

Everyone’s heads snapped to the doorway, Quentin’s so fast he near gave himself whip-lash. No one else was supposed to be there. But low and behold, there stood Margo Hanson - with her hands on her hips, and one finger tapping away as if they were the ones that were late. 

“What the hell?” Bacchus uttered, finally sitting up and rubbing at his face to make sure he was seeing what he thought he saw. Eliza opened her mouth about to ask something similar, but Quentin jumped from the bed and rushed to Margo not once breaking stride. Not even as he threw his arms around her and hugged her as tight as he could, without a second thought as to if it was even possible to do so. By Margo’s shell-shocked stance, hands half raised by her sides as if to warn him off, she hadn’t known he’d be able to touch her either.

“How did you get here?” Quentin asked, breathless and not wanting to let her go. Eliza would probably have given him a hug if he’d asked for it, but it hadn’t been at the forefront of his mind during their journey. Now he couldn’t think of anything else he needed more in the world. Margo let out the breath she hadn’t known she was holding, and hugged him back just as fiercely - if Q had a heartbeat it would have skipped in his chest. Instead it just ached. “You’re not dead, right?”

“No, not dead, just astral projecting to help your ass,” Margo told him, no bite to her words, just a fondness that he felt in his bones. “Baby Jesus on a cracker, you are ice cold.” Quentin let go of her, reluctant and sad to do so, but also noticing how warm she was. How a pulsating energy radiated from her as Quentin held her to his chest. Was it her magic? Her life? Her heartbeat? He wanted to know more, yearned for it, and suddenly understood why the dead and the living weren’t supposed to interact. Why it made chills run down a person’s spine, or sick to their stomach; and why the dead were always seen as the villains in ghost stories. He wanted to pull Margo close again and not let go, ever, and it had nothing to do with her being one of his best friends.

“Sorry,” he told her when they broke apart, watching her rub her arms to try and bring some warmth back into them - only to realize she was just a spirit and couldn’t actually create friction. “Yeah, everything here is cosmetic. I’m not really cold and you’re not really warm, it’s all in our heads. Or, our minds anyway,” he said with a sheepish smile, pointing to his head with the haircut from over a year ago. “Heads are superficial, too.”

“I see your subconscious decided the short cut wasn’t for you,” Margo smirked, hesitating only a second before reaching up and running her fingers through the long locks. Even that small of a touch sent enough heat through Quentin’s cold, dead skin that it sunk all the way down to his core. “Now come on, I’m taking you hobbits to Isengard. Time’s a-wastin’.”

“Wait, all of us?” Eliza questioned, her glass of champagne hovering near her lips. “You think we’re still needed?”

“Who the fuck knows,” Margo said with a tilt of her hips to one side. “But better to have back-up than get stuck with our dicks in our hands. I honestly wasn’t expecting Q to have an entourage, but I’m not complaining either.” She looked honestly relieved to see Eliza, and Quentin remembered that she was the one who had helped Margo bring him and Eliot back from their alternate timeline by the mosaic. Eliza was definitely an asset. It was good to have someone who knew what the hell was going on most of the time, from intuition if nothing else. “I’m glad it’s you,” Margo added, and Eliza raised her glass in a cheers before sipping in a long, delicate draw that drained the glass. 

Entering the room with a final squeeze to Quentin’s arm, giving him a private smile she had always graced him with ever since he’d known her, Margo stalked forward and snagged the champagne bottle from Bacchus’s hands and placed it far out of his reach on an adjacent table. “You look like you’re handling death well,” she said absently, giving Bacchus a judgmental stare. “They don’t have a Valhalla for dead gods?”

“You’re looking at it sweetheart,” Bacchus told her, arms outstretched and not an ounce of joy in his face. “We’re full-a too much power to be stashed anywhere else. The only one’s with a backdoor escape tunnel are Hades and Persephone, but that fucker built the place so of course he’d make himself a reset button.”

“Yeah, yeah, we have a bone to pick with them too,” Margo practically yawned, then took the deceased god by the elbow - with a grip Quentin knew from experience pinched and hurt like a bitch - and bodily dragged him from his lounge seat. “We can compare notes on the way. _Andale._ I got a timetable to keep so move your ass.”

“Where are we going?” Quentin asked, stuffing the pocketwatch into his front jeans pocket for later. He could still feel the familiar tick of the second hand moving against his thigh, and that was as much a relief as anything else. 

“Don’t know yet, have to see where the magic dust trail leads us,” Margo answered cryptically, making sure Bacchus was upright and able to follow on his own before turning on her four inch heels towards the door once more. She pointed to her fairy eye, and as she approached Quentin could see a golden spark deep in it’s inky black depth that hadn’t even seen before. He’d been looking right at her face, how had he not seen it? He squinted at her until she stopped in front of him and glared at him. “You want a fucking picture? Or you want to get out of this place?”

“Out, please,” he said in a rush, standing back up straight and glad he couldn’t flush in embarrassment any more. “Very much out.”

“That’s what I thought.”

-

The trail the fairy eye had them following led far outside of Whitespire, taking the group South through the royal orchards and down into the farming provinces. They never really headed South often, not when they had been ruling the kingdom. To the North was the Queenswood, the Northern Marshes, all the hunting grounds and good fur traders. Margo and Eliot had at least toured the Southern lands more than Quentin had, back when the crops were failing and El had to bestow his familial legacy’s knowledge on his new kingdom. Begrudgingly. But the difference between the flourishing sectioned off land she remembered, and the dead wasteland it was in the Anti-Verse even stopped Margo in her tracks. Atop the hills that housed Whitespire’s ground, they could see everything stretching for miles and miles.

And all of it was dead. 

Not much shocked her, but this devastation before her left a very trademark-able look on her face. Startled Margo. It did not happen often.

“It’s all like this,” Quentin told her, stopping beside her but not near as effected. He was dead, too, after all.

“I can’t believe you’ve been here for months,” Margo said to him, grim and still staring with wide eyes. 

“New York was worse,” Quentin confided in her. “Like something out of a Michael Bay movie, but at the end after all the bombs and explosions.” Margo pulled a face and Quentin had to keep from smiling or laughing at it. He’d just missed her that much. “Brakebills wasn’t as bad as the city, though.”

“God don’t tell me, I don’t want to know what our house looks like,” she groaned. “Walking Dead set-worthy, I’m sure.”

“It wasn’t terrible. Bacchus was living there, he approves of your decor and layout,” Quentin grinned. “And Eliot’s bar.”

“I bet he did,” Margo said, still a little somber, but warming to Quentin’s chatter as they walked. “We going to run into any other dead gods here? I don’t think Ember or Umber will be too happy to see us.”

“Shit,” Quentin nearly missed a step. “I forgot about them.” Margo cast him a serious side-eye and Quentin stumbled over words in defense. “Bacchus said there was no one here except him and his siblings. But he hadn’t tried to come to Fillory before bringing us here.”

“I don’t blame him. Nasty way to go,” Margo shook her head and repressed a shudder. Vivid flashes of memory attacking her no matter how much she tried to push them back. How the Monster had ripped open the demigod’s chest to extract the stone, how the mere sight of it sent sharp blinding pain through her skull, spiraling her vision into glare marks until she couldn’t even see Bacchus’s final moments clearly. Like looking into the sun. “He’s handling this pretty well, considering.” She glanced over her shoulder at Eliza and Bacchus, who were a few yards back as Bacchus finished off his bottle he’d brought from the castle and stumbled over every tree root they passed along the way. Eliza merely grabbed his shirt sleeve when he began to waver, pulling him back towards her so he was upright or nudging him in the opposite direction as they walked. “I was just giving him shit before. I’d be drinking too if I died like that. Hell, I’d be pissed.”

Quentin nodded in agreement, and let the silence stretch comfortably as he considered his friend beside him. He had to clear his throat to break it, careful in how he asked what was on his mind. “Are you doing okay?” Margo gave him a questioning look like his inquiry was out of nowhere, but Quentin just had a hunch. His intuition since he’d died seemed to have increased exponentially. “Eliot said you were fixing up things in Fillory, that something was wrong. Again. But what happened?” His amendment made Margo smirk and huff to herself in amusement, looking out in front of them once more as they trudged through farmer’s fields that were nothing but dust and crumbled bits of plant. Her kingdom reduced to a graveyard that honored no dead. 

“El and I went to Fillory not too long after he was back on his feet,” Margo told him, keeping her tone guarded and neutral. She and Eliot hadn’t been able to cover the entire conversation from the Mirror World, so she wasn’t sure how much the two men had been able to hash out or convey. What Q needed to hear from El and not her - plus, he’d asked about her after all. No one had done that in a minute. “We ended up 300 years in Fillory’s future; no Children of Earth ruling it, everything run down and at peace - but not the free kind of peace. Everyone’s scared. Magic and time are fucking up, the clocktrees are all broken. Most of the questing creatures are dead.”

Quentin swallowed thickly at the picture she painted. “300 years?” That was a little more than the hiccup he’d expected. “So the whole court is gone, what about Fen and Josh?” 

“They’re gone too,” Margo said, low and quiet. More friends, dead. “Something is very wrong with Fillory, and apparently I’m the one that’s supposed to fix it.” Because who else, when everyone was already running around like chickens with their heads cut off. 

“It sounds like something is very wrong everywhere,” Quentin pointed out gently. “Do you think if we fix everything else it’ll fix Fillory, too?”

“I'm not sure I can take that chance,” Margo muttered, glancing at Quentin and he could see how worried she really was. That she’d fail Josh and Fen, and all of Fillory while she was at it.. How close she was to being crushed by everything on top of her, on the precipice of it all just being too much. It wasn't often that she glanced in that direction of vulnerability; at the chance to let it all crumble so she didn't have to hold on so tightly. Be the strong, immovable force she was known for. Giving in seemed so much easier from the bottom of the mountain of problems in front of her, with all its weight bearing down. People’s lives were literally on her shoulders. But Quentin had learned, both through death and experience, that the mountain wasn’t meant to be something she carried - it was meant to be something she climbed. 

Not stopping their trek, Quentin reached over and pulled Margo into his side, letting her rest her head on his shoulder as they continued over the dead grey hills. “We’ll find a way to bring them back. I’m dealing with clocktree stuff as well,” he reached into his pocket with his free hand and brought out the little pocketwatch still ticking away faithfully. “I pried this from the one living thing in the whole Anti-Verse. It was that itty bitty sapling, next to the Big Ben clocktree.” Margo took it from his offered hand and looked it over delicately. Still mildly distracted. “If it’s not all connected, then we’ll find a way to turn back time first. Save Fen and Josh and factory reset Fillory. Who knows, maybe it’ll buy us some time with the other stuff on our plate. But our friends are first. I’ll be here to help you in any way I can.” Margo wasn’t looking at him now, and Q just hugged her tighter, resting his cheek on the top of her head and pretended he didn’t hear her sniff quietly. He only heard it once, it could have been the wind. 

“I really fucking missed you, Q,” Margo grumbled, full of heart and contempt at the same time. “Don’t ever do stupid shit like this again.”

“Promise,” Quentin whispered, and in that moment he felt content that he knew he meant it. Their track records weren’t the greatest for keeping promises, and in this instance they both knew he didn’t have as much control as his statement claimed, but he truly did mean it when he said it. With all his heart.

It would have to be enough.

-

The further South they walked, following the glowing trail that Margo thought looked like the Disney animation of fairy dust from Peter Pan - she declined to share this with the class - the more humid the air became. It was no warmer, just heavier and damp. There was also a smell of rot in the air, a juxtaposition to the coldness seeping into their skin and creeping under their clothing. But it was very similar to the sweet-rot of the Northern Marshes; organic and reminiscent of something that was not yet quite dead. Rotting, for sure, but still feebly clinging to life. 

The landscape began to change as well. Fillory still had an array of pale colors, hues in the different shades of grey that made up the world, and sometimes even a mud brown that flirted with the idea of life trying to break through the surface. Fillory was a magical place of fuckery that didn’t play by any rules, ever, not even the Anti-Verse. Margo listened to the others rant about the lack of physics and sense when it came to how things worked in the world they inhabited; the only rule being it was exactly like our universe, but dead. This rule had so many holes and problems in it that the gods didn’t seem to want to fix, so the entire place was chaos. A circle of hell all its own. 

Margo actually felt bad for Bacchus and the other demigods, who were probably stuck here after she led Quentin out and Eliza was returned to her final resting place. But she had noticed this careful glint in his eyes, when she looked at Bacchus every now and then. He had sobered up quickly, perks of a demigod liver, and had grown very quiet the closer they got to their destination. She wouldn’t put it past him to make a run for it. Escape into the Underworld and find someone’s afterlife to crash, party it up with Benjamin Franklin or some shit. Good for him, if he did. She certainly wasn’t going to stop him, and she doubted Q or Eliza would either. 

The dust trail grew thick and bright as they passed through a forest that wasn’t as dead as the last few, or didn’t appear to be. Rotten, rust colored moss spotted the trunks, the wood splintering and deteriorating before their eyes without the aid of bugs or bacterial. It was as if the very air was eating away at any remaining living cells trying to stay trapped within the bark. Quentin glanced at Margo far too many times as they ventured into the woods, watching her for signs of harm or discomfort (not that Margo was known for outwardly showing such things) but Margo couldn’t help but be worried as well. Her soul was still attached to a living body - she didn’t want to return to find half her face eaten off, or part of her soul missing. She remembered what Julia had been like without a shade, and Alice after she had spent time as a niffin. Nope, no thank you, not a good look or lifestyle choice. Hard pass.

The trail finally came to a clearing in the woods, or as best a clearing as there could be, and the golden spots were so thick it was like wading through glitter. But when she was able to get around it and see what lay in the clearing, Margo stopped in confusion and stared.

“Oh wow,” Eliza murmured in muted astonishment, “you found the Tower of Lost Time. I was never able to pin it down when I was alive.”

“But it can’t be here,” Margo scowled, staring at the run down brick tower with dead strangler vines trailing up the sides to help hold it together. “I found it outside the Northern Marsh, in the Queenswood. That’s like a hundred miles North of here.” But no matter what angle she looked at it, it was the same tower that Plover had led her to. 

“It has been known to wander,” Eliza mentioned, walking closer to inspect the old building. Despite it existing in the Anti-Verse, it actually looked in better shape than when Margo had found it in Living Fillory. “It’s not exactly a fixed point in time, so it shifts around as the world revolves the sun. I’ve met astrologists that claimed to have seen it floating up about in space during their observations.”

“So it’s on a fixed point in location,” Quentin concluded, looking at the tower like he was trying to place it somewhere in his memory. In all his travels and questing he’d done in their early royalty days, Margo was surprised he hadn’t found it himself at some point. “There’s usually a reason for that, isn’t there?”

“Yes, usually,” Eliza smiled, amused and proud of Quentin’s clever observation. “I guess we’ve found it.”

“You think it’s fixed because it has a door?” Margo said with a scrunch to her expression, but the more she mulled it over the more plausible it sounded.

“I’ve seen weirder shit,” Bacchus added for the first time in a long while. “Gods do fucked up stuff when they create links between worlds, you can get creative with no rules.” He grinned but it didn’t reach his eyes as he took the last shot in the bottle he still held. He’d been saving it for one last burst of liquid courage, and Margo knew without a doubt that he was going to make a break for it. “And those Ember and Umber dudes did some _weird_ shit - and some lazy shit. I think I would have like them.”

“You would have partied Fillory into the fucking ground,” Margo agreed, dreading the very idea but glad she lightened the serious expression in Bacchus’s face. She didn’t want him doing anything _too_ drastic or stupid when they were in the middle of her leg of the Coldwater Rescue Mission. She exhaled through pursed lips, not wanting to go back inside the place she had almost died, but at least she knew the layout of the interior. She had a good idea where the door might be. “You ready?” she asked Q. He hadn’t moved an inch forward, and was fiddling with the watch in his hand like it was his own personal worry stone. Those wide, dark eyes latched onto hers, and he was afraid. There was no hiding that. He didn’t know what lay inside - but she did. Eliot had planned this thing down to a damn tee. 

Without another word, Margo took Quentin’s hand and squeezed it as reassuring as she could, then led him inside the tower without letting go. Eliza trailed behind, grinning to herself at yet another layer of Fillory peeled back for her to examine, and Bacchus brought up the rear as eerily silent as he’d been the whole journey.

It was Game Day, kids. Time to break the system.

-

_The Underworld (Library Branch)_

-

Penny paced a corridor that was as odd as it came when in regards to the Underworld Branch of The Library. One side was the clean, white walls and doors that resembled a modern office setting where he’d become accustomed to residing - and on the other the walls were made of off-white brick and intricate scroll carvings, spaced evenly with such delicate craftsmanship that it could have been taken straight from a Greek or Roman temple. He wasn’t as great with the Classics as Alice or Margo, so he couldn’t place it off the top of his head, and especially not now. Penny was close to either chewing on his fingers, or punching a hole in the wall, because this was cutting it way too fucking close. He had one job damnit, and he’d been so proud of his idea that contributed to the plan.

But Penny had been waiting for over an hour - and the person he was supposed to meet was fucking _late_. 

“God fucking damnit,” he muttered through clenched teeth, turning on the heel of his expensive leather shoes to pace the segment of hallway once more, and finally saw the far doors open in the deafening silence. A familiar figure exited and looked around cautiously, head swiveling as if there was more than two fucking directions he could look. “About damn time! What took you so long?”

“Sorry! I’m so sorry! My supervisor was watching me like a hawk,” Benedict told him, hurrying down the corridor as fast as his long robe would allow him, books and rolled up scrolls under his arm that threatened to spill all over the floor. “You have no idea how hard it was to get these.” Penny hurried the dead Fillorian mapmaker into a doorway on the business side of the hallway, also looking around for the sharp-eyed maproom keeper that had taken on Benedict when he had troubles crossing over during the Underground blackout. What a shitstorm that had been. It had shaken a lot of souls, creating a gigantic mess for the Underworld Library branch as well as Hades’ staff that ran the way-station. Quite a few departed souls had decided they wouldn’t be ready to move on for a very long time, and found positions with the Library while they waited. 

Penny was glad Benedict had been able to find a place in the stupidly expansive maproom of the Underworld Branch, both because he deserved to rest in a place he would be happy - and because it had worked out very well for them to have someone they knew and trusted with access to the layout of the Underworld. 

Ushering Benedict down a stark white hallway and into one of the conference rooms, Penny made sure to lock the door and that no one had seen them. Benedict dropped everything he’d been carrying, and carefully split apart some decoy materials he’d juggling to hide the very old, very distinctive scroll with gold in-lay handles. The paper was black, on the exterior and backside, but the interior faded to white like an ombre and the map itself had been drawn with what looked like liquid silver. It gleamed brightly from the fluorescent overhead lights, and Benedict had to angle it to make out the lines and legend. 

“I don’t know this language,” Benedict murmured as he scanned the carefully tidy letters scrolled across the page, labeling different areas of the expansive drawing. “I’ve only learned around a dozen since I’ve been here. You can feel the magic coming off of this; I don’t think I’ll be able to use a translation spell-” no sooner had the words left his mouth did something incredible happen. The silver linework on the page begin to morph and change before their eyes. The magic worked into the very fabric of the ancient scroll created new words where the old had once been; the common tongue replacing the dead language as seamless as if it had always been that way. In the map’s legend a note was written towards the bottom to speak ‘translate’ to read the map in different languages. 

“Hades thinks of everything,” Penny grumbled, still a little on edge from how close they were cutting it - and also at the powerful god’s level of intuition. He always seemed prepared for anything. Maybe that was the real root of this quest they were set on, that caught Quentin up before he’d passed on. Hades playing the long game, without really having to lift much of a finger when the crisis actually happened. 

“This looks more like Madame Persephone’s handwriting,” Benedict said, a trace of adoration filling the spaces in between his words. He peered carefully at the map and scrutinized every bit he could see, unraveling it along the table and marveling at how long and intricate it remained. After long, tense minutes where Penny peered with him trying to decipher where everything was, noting places he recognized and a _lot_ that he didn’t, Benedict made a noise of affirmation and pointed to a space along the border three feet into the scroll. “Okay, we’re here. That’s the maproom.” He reached into one of the deep pockets in his robe and brought out a few stones that Penny bet were from Fillory originally. He placed one on the map where the corridor was that they had met. 

“So we need to find the doorway,” Penny mumbled, reaching inside his own pocket and pulling out a scrap of paper with his near illegible scrawl all over it. From his own investigations and Eliot’s correspondence letter - now burned in the fireplace in Penny’s office. “This is all I have on the location. It’s in a place called the _Dead Stairwell_ and it’ll be the third room, across from a statue that has something to do with revering death.” He had found the descriptor in some very old books that dealt with some crazy ramblings about different realms and something about a giant stack of turtles. “Hopefully the translation isn’t as rough as I think it is. If I open the wrong door who knows what I’ll find.”

“Best to be certain before you do then,” Benedict agreed, looking up to see Penny’s dead-ass expression of accusation - and he remembered how the dead Librarian was basically already late. “... _I’ll_ be sure, before you go. Um - you find the mediation rooms on here and mark it and I’ll work on this. We can figure out your route to get you there faster.” He handed Penny a stone and the two bent over the long scrolling map once more. Running their fingers over the silver lines and learning more about the Underworld Library than either probably would have discovered in a lifetime. 

-

With a shaky hand, Quentin opened the door inside the Tower of Lost Time and had to cover his eyes at the brightness that lay beyond. Margo, Eliza, and Bacchus were at his back, peering around him on various levels of sight like an old school Scooby-Doo episode. But nobody crossed the threshold, not even Quentin, as the hallway came into view on the other side and all the could see were white doors and white walls and alabaster white statues lining the opposite wall. Directly across from them was a statue of Anubis, with his giant jackal-shaped head looking towards his feet as if bowing in welcome to whoever was brave enough to step through the door. It was nice, if not unnerving in the completely white surrounding, because there wasn’t another person standing there waiting to receive him. 

“Where the fuck is Penny?” Margo hissed, looking around and not trusting that she could actually go into the Underworld instead of the Anti-Verse without something drastic or terrible happening to her body up in living part of The Library. “He was supposed to be here to get you and take you to the next part.”

“Would someone stop me if I tried to get there myself?” Q asked, placing a hand on the frame to look further down the hallway. “I don’t know what I could do to make a mess just wandering around.”

“I’m sure you’d find a way,” Margo teased, stepping back from the door and pulling on Quentin’s arm to have him follow her. “Now hug me, damnit. I’ll see you on the other side.” Quentin hugged her tight, crushing her to his chest and wishing she was going with them. “Don’t do anything stupid,” she said into his shirt then looked up and gave him a stern stare that clearly said _or else._ Q nodded, and with a deep (unneeded) breath walked through the doorway into the blaring white hallway. 

It was silent as the grave. Not even footsteps echoed down the hall, leaving him utterly alone in the vastness of the Underworld Library.

“Where to?” Eliza said, standing directly behind him, and Quentin near jumped out of his skin at her close proximity. He’d thought he was on his own now. The door slammed shut behind the both of them and Bacchus was leaning against the door as if to make himself scarce should someone begin down the hallway. They both stared at him. 

“What? You thought I wasn’t going to help you anymore either?”

“I thought you couldn’t leave the Anti-Verse,” Quentin said in confusion. 

“So did I, but I was feeling lucky,” Bacchus answered with a grin. “Now come on, pick a direction and let’s get going.” Quentin hesitated a moment, not sure why he was the ring leader when he’d been dead the shortest amount of time, but he turned down the left side of the hallway and led the way out of the stark white corridor with the pure white statues and just as white unlabeled doors. 

It was the most uncomfortable hallway he’d ever been in, in his entire life - and yes, that included facing down the sister-Monster inside Julia’s body.

They didn’t even get to the first turn before Quentin ran smack-dab into Penny in a very sharp suit, and he did mean _right_ into Penny. Quentin went sprawling to the floor and Penny was knocked into the person behind him roughly, though they managed to keep their feet under them.

“Your majesty!” a familiar voice shouted, and Quentin went wide-eyed as Benedict helped haul him to his feet then near crushed him in a bear hug. “You made it! I knew you would. Did you finish your quest?” he was smiling and happier than Quentin had ever remembered seeing him during their time together in Fillory, and he looked no different than the day he jumped off the side of the Muntjac. The memory of it all was just as vivid as if it had happened earlier that day, and Q knew it probably showed on his face. The nice thing about being dead was he didn’t seem to care about that fact. 

“Not yet,” he managed, and tried to make his smile not so painful to hold. “It’s good to see you, what are you doing here?”

“I work in the Library’s maproom down here. I’m helping Penny.” Benedict practically beamed at the statement, looking next to him to the man that he would always consider his best friend above all others. Penny rolled his eyes, but there was no malice or real annoyance in the gesture. 

“We’re running late, we need to go.” Penny told them, eyeing Eliza and Bacchus standing behind Quentin. “You brought back-up?”

“Have to contribute somehow,” Quentin answered, eyeing Penny and not sure if he should also hug him or not. Last time had kind of been a one time thing. “Good to see you, too.”

That Penny did smile at, small and half a laugh that could have been mean - but wasn’t. The Library had changed him even more than the last time Quentin had seen him. “I’m sure, now come on. Benedict get the map out. I won’t be able to explain all of you if we get caught.”

“No tours for wayward souls?” Eliza asked with a private smirk, saddling up to inspect the map with Benedict and admiring the craftsmanship. 

“Only on Tuesdays,” Penny quipped. “This way.” He nodded towards a set of white marble stairs, and they all filed up as quickly and quietly as they could.

They hid in plain sight, passing through room after room within the Underworld Library branch - most holding more stacks of books than anyone could count. The dusty tomes and dim lights alone were enough to give PTSD-level flashbacks of everything Quentin had been through in The Library - but soon everything became a blur as Penny led them further back into the parts of the Underworld that were barely touched by even the ones who worked there. 

Quentin also noticed the lights flickering. In some places the lights were out entirely, ominous and shaded. _Very_ creepy, considering where they were and what could be lurking in the dark corners of the Underworld. 

“You’re losing power,” Quentin mentioned, his eyes trained on each dark spot as they passed - both afraid and on the lookout for something moving in the shadows. 

“A lot of branches are,” Penny explained, slowing a fraction so he and Q were in step as they stealthily maneuvered through the stacks that seemed to go on forever. “Alice has been doing what she can to stall the power drain, but the Underworld Branch is so large I’m surprised more sections aren’t shutting down.”

“Things really are falling apart, aren’t they?” Quentin wasn’t sure what he’d gotten himself into anymore, but everywhere he turned he seemed to find something that was broken or failing. The only thing still fighting strong was the willpower of his friends. 

“Things are always falling apart, that’s what happens when time passes,” Penny said plainly. “We’re just dealing with it all at once. Ready to pitch in?” 

“I hope so,” Quentin tried to smile and knew it didn’t quite work. His hand hovered over his jeans pocket where the clocktree pocketwatch still ticked away against his leg, and he worried his bottom lip with his teeth as the weight of it all started to stack down on his head and shoulders. He didn’t even know what the watch was supposed to do, beyond lead Margo to him in the Anti-Verse - but he hoped it had a secret compartment or something with detailed instructions on how to fix the end of magic and the world all at once. 

“You’ll be ready,” Penny said, looking straight ahead again as they approached the back wall of the stacks, dark and shadowed but lined with doors once more. “You weren’t before, but that’s what quests are for, right? Learning to change and adapt, prepare you for the hard shit.”

“The boss battle, yeah,” Quentin agreed, not feeling the least bit prepared - but it was a nice change for Penny to have faith in him. “Did you know I’d be back? When you gave me my metro card.”

Penny’s usual small smirk spread into a wide shark-like grin, full of teeth and mirth. “I had a hunch.” He glanced at Quentin, stopping at a door and opening it into another bright hallway. “Someone handed me a new chapter for you, while your book was sitting on my desk. Only the people with life after death get new chapters.”

“You dick, so you knew the whole time,” Quentin spat incredulous but trying not to laugh. Of course Penny fucking knew. When did Penny not know _everything_? “You couldn’t give me a heads up?”

“Where’s the fun in that?” Penny shot back with a scrunch to his expression. “Besides, I was trying to remember all the shit I was supposed to do that wouldn’t give it away - _way_ more fun than just letting you in on the secret.”

“Like what?” Quentin asked, turning back to make sure the whole gang was still with them. 

“Well for one, making sure we weren’t spotted at your funeral was a big one,” Penny said off-handedly. “Margo’s fairy eye can see ghosts, she just can’t hear them, so we had to be out of her line of sight. That’s why I wouldn’t let you get too close.”

“She wasn’t even there to start, how did you know?” Quentin continued to nit-pick, enjoying the banter he had missed for much longer than he’d been dead. Penny of timeline 23 was very different than his former roommate, and as much as he hated to admit it - Quentin had actually missed the stupid jerk. 

“The chapter had everything, I basically used it as a script - shh! Get back!” Everyone hit the wall and stayed plastered against it as Penny looked around a corner and listened to a small cluster of Librarians chatting as they walked down the hallway. “Shit, they’re coming to the stacks.” He looked back at the group and around as if trying to find a way to hide everyone, but the hallway was void of doors and white as snow. They couldn’t hide. 

“Guess I’m up,” Benedict said with a heaved breath, darting to the front and handing Penny the black and gold scroll. “You know the way, but just in case.” Then he turned to Quentin one last time and forced a grim smile. “It’s been a pleasure, your majesty. Good luck up there.”

“Thank you, Benedict,” Quentin said, giving him a quick, hard hug before the man disappeared down the adjacent corridor and they heard him talking to the group of Librarians. 

“I’m afraid I got lost on my way to the maprooms, I know they’re somewhere this way-” and the voices faded. 

They waited a few more minutes, then darted around to find the empty hallway and Penny picked up speed. “My office isn’t far from here, we’ll stop there for a minute then get you to the mediation room.”

As quiet as they could be, the group completed the final maze of corridors and random rooms, and Quentin felt like he was stuck in a 007 film that was going on forever. The Underworld Branch was enormous, and complicated, and everything looked the fucking _same_. He didn’t know how Penny was able to stand it, and immediately guilt clawed at his gut at the thought of how hard everyone was trying to revive him - but they all hadn’t done jack-shit for Penny.

Inside his office, Penny collapsed into his desk chair, and the others rested in various seats lining the walls. Quentin wasn’t sure why there were more than one seat to choose from, he doubted Penny had group sessions of _Secrets Taken to the Grave_. 

“Why is it so important that no one sees us?” Eliza finally asked when she caught her breath - the need to breath carrying over from the Anti-Verse to the Underworld even though everyone knew they didn’t really have to in the first place. 

“Because the Library is a bureaucratic nightmare, and we’re on a time schedule,” Penny explained. “If they found you in the hallways, and I somehow managed to explain everything, they would still have to check and double check - probably triple check - all the way up to Hades himself if they had to. To make sure everyone was doing exactly as their books say they were supposed to. And I don’t even know where to begin with you two.” He glanced between Eliza and Bacchus. “How did you even get to the Anti-Verse.”

“I was dropped off,” Eliza stated with a prim smile. “To help Quentin keep his head together on his quest, and help when I could.” She turned to let Bacchus explain his situation for himself, but the dead demi-god was bent over the map of the Underworld. Inspecting it very thoroughly. Half the scroll was pooled on the floor. “Bacchus was already there.”

“What? Oh yeah - it’s where dead gods go I guess,” he only glanced up for a split second before his manic eyes were back on the scroll, unraveling it more and more as he searched the contents. “But I’m out and I’m not going back.”

“See - that’s what will get me in trouble,” Penny said, pointing at him. Bacchus didn’t even look up. So, running his hands down his face Penny just let it go. Again, time table. “If you get caught, you don’t know me and we’ve never met.”

“Roger that,” Bacchus said, standing up and somehow - magically - the scroll zipped up like a window shade until it was tightly rolled and tucked under Bacchus’ arm. “You got it from here, vibe-killer Magician?” 

“Yeah, thanks for everything Bacchus,” Quentin said with a roll of his eyes, bumping fists with the dead god as he was graced with a smile. “Have fun partying with Gandhi or whatever.”

“Dude, Gandhi can’t hold his liquor for shit! I gotta hit up Hemingway first, then see if Ramses is still kicking around somewhere. His peeps made the _best_ beer, ever. No question.” He grinned wide, gave Eliza a very sweet kiss on the cheek, and then was out the door before anyone could blink. 

“Guess I’ll hang here,” Eliza said with a sigh, sitting back to lounge in a chair comfortably. She had made herself a cup of tea while everyone had been talking. “Penny can lead me back to the metro afterwards. You boys get moving. You have a universe to save.” She smirked over the rim of her cup and took a delicate sip that she visibly savored. 

“Eliza, you’ve been -” Quentin didn’t even know how to tell her how invaluable her companionship and wisdom was to him. Her friendship. “Wonderful. I don’t know what I would have done without you.” He sat beside her and hugged her as well. He hadn’t always been a very huggy person, but now he gave them out like candy on Halloween. He’d never really known how to be receptive, or convey, how grateful he was to the people in his life. How much he valued their dedication and love. Sometimes a hug was more than enough. 

“Quentin, I don’t say this lightly, but it truly has been a pleasure,” Eliza told him, setting her tea down to hug him back. “You have so much strength in you, use it and use it well. I believe in you.” She meant it, Q knew she did, and when he pulled back she looked right in his eyes to convey as such. “Good luck. Now go, the world is waiting.”

Penny was already opening the door as Quentin hugged her once more, choking on how much he would miss her now that he would truly never see her again. But then he had to stand, and follow Penny out of the office towards the mediation rooms. He didn’t know what the next leg of his resurrection plan entailed, or who would be fetching him next, but his non-beating heart could only take so much nostalgia and ache. He had a feeling it wasn’t going to get any easier.

“I’m sorry we never tried to bring you back,” Quentin said as he followed Penny through more identical hallways. “Everyone is bending over backwards for me, but we didn’t even really give you a funeral.”

“No one cried, either,” Penny chuckled, not sounding the least bit bitter about it. “But it’s alright, I’m okay with it - with my life here. This new role isn’t so bad.”

“We still could have at least looked into it,” Quentin mumbled, feeling the guilt full force now. 

“Yeah, probably. But it takes a lot to try and bring someone back from the dead, and you weren’t exactly in love with me so it’s not like I expect the same treatment you’re getting.” Penny didn’t even miss a step as he spoke, like it was the most obvious truth in the world and really didn’t even need to be said. But Quentin’s silence made him look over his shoulder at the shell-shocked expression on his face. “Nope, I’m not getting into that. You two can figure it out later. Stop looking so surprised, it’s not like you didn’t know.” Penny’s reprimand hit him square in the chest and allowed him to breathe again, to not stick on the couple of words in his previous statement.

Of course he knew Eliot loved him. So did Julia, and Alice, and his mom somewhere deep down. But to be _in_ love was a different monster entirely. _Had_ he known that?

Of course he did. Quentin had known all along. After all - he was in love with Eliot as well.

Fuck, they were so stupid.

“Yeah, I guess I did.” 

Penny just scoffed a laugh mockingly. “Idiots.” 

-

_Library Mediation Room_

-

They were late, they were so fucking late. They had to be, it felt like hours had passed. Honestly, it could have been days -  about an hour and a half into his wait inside the mediation room Eliot had fallen asleep on the couch and awoke to dimmed lights and still no sign of Q or Penny. 

That was one way to ruin his insanely over-due beauty sleep. Something had to have gone wrong. 

He paced and worried and stressed himself into a fit, and they still didn’t show. There was even time for Eliot to splash water on his face, slick back his overgrown curls and straighten his clothes. He didn’t dare to leave and shave again, he had managed to both shower and shave before coming to the stark white room between worlds. It was a testament how long he’d been waiting that his stubble had already begun to regrow. 

Also, why was everything other-worldly white? The Mirror World, the mediation rooms, Penny said most of the office areas in the Underworld Branch were white as well. What was wrong with color? (Not that he was one to talk, having worn nothing but black the past few months.)

On the flip side - waiting gave him time to go over the rest of his plan in meticulous detail. Run the spells, the pieces of the ritual, who had to be where and doing what to make it all work, and the contingency plans for if things went wrong. In some cases - like the witch’s spell - there _was_ no contingency plan and that gave him a level of anxiety that craved whiskey and oxys. But for the things he could control, Eliot had them _controlled_. He couldn’t tell if everyone had been impressed or worried by his level of command, how tightly he had set out to master every second that passed and every step that was taken. When he’d been explaining the plan he’d been at the point beyond caring what they thought about his mental state. He just wanted them on board. 

Thank God they trusted him at least a little - because after a bit of sleep, Eliot knew he was off his fucking rocker. The fact that Q and Penny were late was just proof that he couldn’t control jack shit, not as much as he tried to. He and Margo spent years trying to control a vast array of situations and outcomes; manipulating people and parties alike, and they had gotten very good at having a steady handle on their lives and the school they called home. Even in Fillory they managed to land on their feet most of the time. But this was different, this was _Quentin_ , and he couldn’t believe he’d drive his head so far into the sand he hadn’t looked up to consider that he might fail at this. That there wasn’t some divine intervention, and they were about to royally fuck up the world even worse, all because he couldn’t let Q go. 

Fuck, and now he was going to over-think himself to death. Where the fuck was Penny?

Eventually Eliot managed to calm himself enough to sit on the white couch, hunched over and worrying the rings on his fingers. He didn’t dare to look up anymore as he waited and waited, his mind a reeling mess of chaos, until it all shattered when the door across the room opened. His head snapped up, and there was Penny in his Armani suit with the pure silver cufflinks - and behind him, looking more solid and real than Eliot had expected him to be, was Quentin. Just as he remembered him. 

Eliot stood but didn’t approach them. Quentin didn’t move closer either as Penny busied himself shutting the door - effectively sealing them in a space void of time. Eliot and Q just stared at each other, and Eliot didn’t know what to do. He wasn’t sure if he could touch him, or hug him, or what could happen in the space between worlds. But just the sight of the younger Magician loosened everything tight and painful inside Eliot’s chest. He was here, he was really here and he wasn’t on the other side of a mirror.

“You made it.” He meant the words to sound flippant and airy, his usual teasing tone, but they ended up breathless. Revealing how worried he’d been, how he hadn’t been sure it would happen at all. Despite all his careful planning and precision, there was always the chance this could go sideways and he’d be left sitting in that damn room for eternity. For a while that’s what he’d begun to believe.

“The door was on the ass-end of the Library,” Penny clarified, stepping further into the room when neither Eliot or Quentin made any indications of moving. He looked between them in confusion, then rolled his eyes and made himself comfortable in the center of the room between them. Resigned to the fact he was going to be doing intercession work off the clock. “I’m pretty sure he wasn’t spotted, but everyone will know what you’re doing once the pages of his book are written. They aren’t super cool with unscheduled resurrections, a lot of rules and shit that I know you’re nowhere near following.”

“So we need to get a move on,” Eliot said, nodding in understanding. His gaze darted back to Q, hovering by the door like he wasn’t sure what to do either - and staring right back at Eliot. He didn’t look dead, he looked solid and warm and like something that had stepped right out of Eliot’s memories; dark eyes and long hair and a terribly old flannel over a soft gray shirt, jeans and dress shoes because he was a hot mess like that but at least he wore one nice thing every day. Looking him up and down, unabashedly like the first day they met, Eliot felt that loosening in his chest spread to his limbs, his joints, the muscles in his face that relaxed into a smile that was so easy to hold it felt impossible. Q was right there. Why the fuck wasn’t Eliot hugging him again?

The smile Eliot couldn’t control, small and painfully real, broke Quentin from his trance. Finally taking that step further into the room of white walls and white furniture, wanting to move like a normal fucking human and glance around to take in his surroundings. Join the conversation. But all he could do was watch Eliot’s face, his sea-green eyes locked on his own, inspect every inch of the other man who had very much not followed his instructions on taking care of himself. He still looked like he’d been run over by a truck, and as much as Quentin wanted to sink into his arms and let the man hug him until he felt his bones pop - he kind of also wanted to smack him. Eliot promised he wouldn’t run himself down even more trying to bring Q back, and yet here they were. 

He hadn’t known he was still walking towards Eliot until Penny’s arm blocked his path, keeping him a good couple feet from the other. Eliot looked just as startled that Penny interfered. 

“No, no, no,” Penny tutted, looking only half sorry about it. “No big reunion shit right now. Quentin is still just a soul, he’s got no body you can actually touch - and El is actually _here_ in the flesh. Won’t be fun for anyone. No touchy.”

“We got to hug you!” Eliot protested, feeling robbed and scowling. 

“I’m a Librarian, I have special privileges. Different magics and rules of physics or whatever. We’re basically boot-legging Coldwater out of here, he’s got nothing.” 

“Then why are we even meeting here?” Quentin questioned, brows furrowed in confusion and frustration still bubbling beneath the surface. As if on cue to strengthen Penny’s argument, his whole form fluttered like a ripple on the surface of a pond. He didn’t feel it, necessarily, the sensation akin to a shudder racing up your spine - but it captured Eliot’s stare and Penny’s resigned expression.

“We have to latch you on to a physical form, so Eliot can bring you to the living world and get you in your new body,” Penny explained, folding his arms in front of him when he was sure that Quentin wasn’t going to try and step any closer to Eliot. Even the faintest brush could do some kind of damage, to Eliot or Quentin or both. He was rooting for them, for sure, but he had to keep the level of idiocy in check to make sure they got to live their stupidly happy ever after. 

“Once you’re latched onto me, then we can get you out of here and do some fancy spellwork in The Library,” Eliot continued, disgruntled but accepting of their situation. He straightened the cuffs of his sleeves as he spoke. “I made a spirit jar, like the ones you captured the Monsters in, but we won’t need an incorporate bond to keep you inside. You just have to be in there long enough to get you to Fillory.”

“Where you’ve made me a new body,” Quentin reiterated, just to clarify. His drawn expression hadn’t wavered as he took it all in - and realized that Eliot had not only taken a lot of risks, but done way too much in too little time. He’d pushed himself way over the edge way before Quentin had even told him to be careful. “Just so you know, you’re in trouble.”

“What? Why?” Eliot protested, but Quentin’s hard stare shut his mouth and he backtracked because - yeah, okay he knew why. “Alright, I know it still looks bad. But I did shower! And shave, and I slept a little in here so I did most of the things you told me to, _and_ still managed to make a spirit jar in 10 hours instead of 600 years-” the pride in his tone died on his tongue, Quentin’s form rippling again to distort the dark stare and barely masked the exhale through his nose. “I listened!”

“If I can’t hug him I can’t strangle him either, right?” Quentin asked, and Penny just shook his head. Shoulders shaking in silent laughter. “But you can. Penny do me a favor and slap him upside the head for me. Hard.” 

Eliot choked on his next defense, and Penny’s eyes were the size of dinner plates. 

“What?”

“Or across the face, it doesn’t matter. Just hit him for me.”

Penny outright laughed then tried to stifle it, but the grin pulling at one side of his mouth was so like his old, lively self that it felt like first year all over again. “Is… is it my birthday? Cause this feels like my birthday.” 

“Okay haha,” Eliot faked a laugh, looking between the two former roommates. “We get it, I’m in trouble. I, _I_ get it - Q,” he clarified as the dead man in front of him narrowed his eyes further.

“I don’t even remember when my birthday is,” Penny mused aloud to himself, but shifted as if he was actually considering Quentin’s request. 

“I know I’ve been running myself into the ground, Margo is going to skin me alive if you don’t get to it first, but we are so close to getting you back and then it’ll be done and we can move on to all the other shitstorms going on. _But_ , but I promised that I will sleep when you are back and alive and I will promise that to you as well, we will have plenty of time to rest in bed before we keep going -” Eliot paused in his ranting, looking up as he realized what had just come out of his mouth. “I meant me, not we, obviously because that sounds like I’m expecting shit when I’m not - unless you want to, I’d be all for that - but _rest comes first_.” He backtracked and steamed forward, only to roll back again like a damn rocking horse, and by the end Quentin just had his eyebrows raised in exasperation and Penny looked like he’d given up all hope on the horse he’d been betting on this entire time.

“Okay, I’ll punch him for you,” Penny said.

“I’m sleep deprived I don’t know what I’m saying!” Eliot near shrieked as his telekinesis he’d been letting run rampant tried to push back at Penny before he could advance. “Seriously we don’t have time for this.”

“It’s a mediation room, time is stalled here,” Penny shot back, and brushed the front of his suit uncomfortably. “I can feel you doing that shit and it doesn’t work, I don’t have a body - fucking shit that tickles, stop it!’

“It’s doing something!” Eliot said in triumph, a little more color in his cheeks and light in his eyes. Which also included panic, but he quickly moved bits of furniture in the room to help block Penny from reaching him. Just in case he was actually going to hit him - one could never tell with Penny. He might have actually meant it. It was effective, causing the Librarian to jump back a step and Quentin to do so as well out of instinct. In a most Quentin-esque fashion he didn’t jump far enough and the side of a chair went straight through his lower abdomen, recreating the ripple effect from before. “Shit, sorry Q!”

“Will you fucking relax I’m wasn’t going to hit you!” Penny yelled across the room. “But I might kick your ass if you don’t stop throwing shit at me.”

“Not a good incentive,” Eliot pointed out, hands out in front of him and feet set apart in a fighting stance like he was prepared to launch the whole couch in Penny’s direction. “Come at me, dead man; according to Alice I’m resourceful as fuck.” 

With a careful side-step out of his space within the white leather armchair, Quentin knew his shoulders were shaking in laughter and he was about to lose all composure. “Okay knock it off, stand down El he wasn’t going to hit you just because I asked him to.”

“I’d be doing it for me, Coldwater, not for you,” Penny growled out, but he backed up and Eliot finally untensed, shifting some things back into place without even twitching his fingers. “Let’s do this damn spell already, you two need to get a move on. Dramatic as shit.”

“My thoughts exactly,” Eliot mumbled with a half-hearted glare, reaching into a pocket within his silver and sepia vest for a spell scrawled across a notebook page. “We need to latch you on to me so we can get you out of this room, and do the spell in the living Library. Apparently we can’t do it here for ‘zoning reasons’.” He made air quotations to show what he thought of that b.s. rule, then flourished the casting in front of him and laid it on a side table to keep as reference.

“Latching one soul onto another sounds dangerous,” Quentin said cautiously, looking at the spell as well and noting it’s complexity. “Why not attach me to a shoe or something?”

“It’s not advised,” Penny mentioned, arms still crossed and coming up on Quentin’s other side. “Either options. You don’t want to be attached to a shoe. But you need to be able to latch onto something that has the capacity to exist in both realms. Boy genius here figured out the loophole that souls can technically do that, but it ain’t going to be a picnic for you both either.”

“It’ll only be for a few minutes,” Eliot said placatingly as he brought his hands up to cast. “Just long enough to get you out the door then we can do the next spell.”

“The next one? Is it as heavy duty as this one?” Quentin questioned, not sure he trusted Eliot’s judgement on his own limits. 

“It takes like three people, I’m not doing it alone - calm yourself,” Eliot grumbled, bringing his fingers together in a strange tangle that looked vaguely impossible. One of the more advanced poppers that Q thought he probably only completed successfully himself once. Maybe. “Penny dear, step back so you don’t get caught up in this.” With another shake of his head, Penny did as he was asked, leaving Quentin there to do nothing but heavy sigh and stuff his hands in his pockets, rocking back on his heels and hoping Eliot knew what he was doing.

“Wait!” Quentin yelled, sudden and barking. Eliot lost focus as he jumped out of his skin, and Penny’s head shot up like he’d heard gunfire. “Wait, look at this.” Stuffing his hand further into his jeans pocket, he brought out the clocktree watch - tiny and silver and still ticking evenly. Following a timeframe that didn’t exist in any of the realms it had passed through. “I got this in the Anti-Verse, and I’m supposed to bring it to the Living world. I wasn’t sure how to do that before but - could you latch me to it?”

Eliot crept closer and peered down at the watch face cautiously, not sure if he could even pick it up and take it. But he tired, careful to not even let his finger’s brush Quentin’s hand - no matter how much he craved to do so. The watch was ice-cold, but solid and metal and kept on ticking as he held it up. “I don’t see why not,” he gave a quirk of a smile, lightly lifting one side of his lips, and looked right at Quentin as he said it. They were standing much too close, Eliot lost in Quentin’s stare until he realized he could partially see through the other - that he radiated cold, and was leaning closer. Eliot radiated warmth, and magic, and standing only inches apart their very souls reached out for each other. 

With a tight grip Penny snagged Quentin’s shoulder and pulled him roughly backwards, a good few feet and kicked an ottoman from the armchair in between. 

“Did I not sound serious before?” he snapped. “You two really are idiots.”

“Sorry,” Quentin said, shaking himself from the trance he’d been in. But he didn’t look it. The hungry stare he was giving Eliot said he would do it again in a heartbeat. His form rippled, unstable, and he didn’t know what that meant.

“Okay, okay let’s try this again, before I lose my second wind,” Eliot sighed, bringing his hands up and having to shake them to cease the trembling the encounter had caused. He didn’t know what would have happened if Q had touched him - but in that moment he _really_ doubted he would have cared.

“Second?” Quentin questioned, a thin layer of ice over his words.

“Okay, like seventh - but who’s counting.” He placed the watch on the table between them, and Quentin crossed his arms over his chest. A scowl that was deeper than all the others before it plastered on his face. Fuck, he was starting to get really pissed at Eliot, and was it just him or was the room getting colder? Eliot exhaled to try and calm his nerves, and his breath misted in front of his face. _Shit_ . Eliot cast a quick glance at Penny, who had looked disturbed by something Eliot couldn’t see. But only for a moment - and then he just looked annoyed at Eliot, too. Great. Penny nodded towards Quentin, and mouthed _fucking apologize_ as if that wasn’t painfully obvious. Something about their close encounter had knocked his entire spiritual center off, and he was back to being focused on how angry he’d been at Eliot. Out of worry, Eliot knew this, but it was increasing with each passing minute and he needed to try and stop the damage it could be creating. With a careful exhale, Eliot lowered his hands and tried to calm himself, not even sure where to begin. But his fight or flight instinct was easier to suppress when he wasn’t in his casting stance. 

“Quentin, listen,” Eliot said, the silence that pulsated in the room as deafening as his heartbeat in his ears. “I’m sorry I went overboard like this, especially after you told me not to. I know I wore myself into the ground, and I haven’t been thinking straight on a lot of things, but I need you to trust me. I have this whole damn thing planned out so intricately, and I _know_ it’ll work. So just let me save you Q, please. You can yell at me all you want after.” _After_. That fucking word again, but it had become Eliot’s mantra. His promise. So much was to come - after - they just had to make it there.

He didn’t move at first, exhale in frustration or uncross his arms, but Quentin heard him and considered his words for a long stretch of silence. Then he made a decision, and it showed on his face. “No, I’m going to yell at you now. I’ll make it quick. I’ll just beat you up later.”

Eliot couldn’t imagine Quentin beating up a teddy bear, so naturally his mind spiraled elsewhere. “Promise?”

“El-” Q growled in warning, the room dropping another five degrees.

“Coldwater, seriously - we need to keep moving,” Penny told him, trying to calm the angered spirit without being gentle about it. “This can wait.”

“No, it can’t,” Quentin snapped. “Because once I’m in that damn jar he’s going to keep on doing this shit and I will not go through all of this just to-”

“Wake up and find out I’m not there anymore?” Eliot said, quiet and neutral - but he didn’t the tone to match the accusation. He was proud he was even able to look the other in the face as he said it.

Quentin’s dark eyes looked right through his. “That’s not fair.” Distress bled through the stone cold expression, and his whole form rippled again. “That’s not-”

Eliot just shook his head and turned back to the piece of paper with the spell on it. “I know, I know - I’m sorry. You’re right. You can give me your very un-sexy verbal tongue-lashing once you’re back in a solid body. But now, if it’s alright, I’m going to try and save you.” His expression was near void of any emotion, but he looked even more drained than before. Quentin hadn’t needed to yell at him at all. No words he came up with would compare to what Eliot had already said to himself. That realization made the anger deflate inside Quentin, and he nodded for the other to proceed. 

The spell didn’t take as much time as Quentin thought it would, and Eliot’s long fingers moved through the steps seamlessly - at a level he hadn’t known Eliot had mastered, or was capable of. The pocketwatch on the side table pulled at him, Q felt the tug much like he had when he’d sat on the metro. Like a string tied to his ribs, pulling him forward as if it was where he was meant to go. The watch pulsed with a silver glow, and Quentin could feel it in his chest, right where his heart should have been. It felt warm, and comforting, and any remaining worry or anger faded completely to awe as he touched his chest and tried to feel the rhythm there. Marveling at the facade of a pulse beneath his fingertips, how warm it was against his bones.

He felt like his heart had been given back to him.

Eliot reached for the watch, picked it up and examined it - to him it looked the same as ever, only Penny and Quentin could see the pulsing silver light - but he still smiled fondly at the little ticking clock. “It feels like you.” Their eyes locked, and the warmth Quentin found there in Eliot’s gaze was enough to make his new-found heart burst. He was still a little mad at him, more worried than mad, but if they pulled this off he’d have all the time in the world to make it up to Quentin. 

And Quentin would have the time to make sure Eliot stayed right where he could reach him. 

“I can see the thread,” Penny interrupted, pointing to a thin sliver of light that stretched from the watch in Eliot’s hands to Quentin’s chest. “It looks like you’re good to go.”

“I can’t see it, but I trust your dead super powers,” Eliot droned airily, turning the watch over in his hand, even going so far as to let it drift between his fingers with his telekinesis. Quentin gasped quietly, because he could feel it every time Eliot touched the smooth silver metal - hot and near burning. “You alright, Q?”

Quentin nodded, lips pressed together so as not to give away how much he could feel Eliot through the watch - all the way to his damn fingerprints. He hummed his affirmation, eyes a little wide and arms crossed across his chest again, but it was only for a few minutes. Soon he’d be stuck in a spirit jar - his day was just full of new experiences. 

“Penny, thanks for getting him here,” Eliot said, but his voice sounded far away to Quentin. “We’ll let you know what happens.”

“If you take too long I’ll just read about it,” Penny teased, but he clapped Eliot on the shoulder anyway, and then did the same to Quentin as he passed. “Good luck, Coldwater. It ain’t over yet.” Jostled from his distracted trance, Quentin looked confused before it all sank in once more. Penny was right; once they managed to resurrect Quentin - _if_ they managed to resurrect him - it was really only the beginning. 

They’d only just begun to climb their mountain. 

\--


	9. Episode 508, Part II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **ANNOUNCEMENT FOR 509:** my in-laws have surprised us for the holiday (Thanksgiving) and now occupy our guest room. So my plans to edit/finish writing for hours on end the next few days are now foiled. No post this weekend, November 30th, but my schedule will resume next weekend. 
> 
> So obviously I did decide to make this a two part episode, because it's a BIG episode and needed the time put into it. So I regret nothing, even though my slight-OCD tendencies are now making my eye twitch when I see there will be '14' chapters instead of '13'. But it's worth it, I hope.
> 
> TW/Episode Notes:  
> \- Suicide mentions, though not as much as last chapter. Quentin's suicide is still an integral plot point so it remains in the second half of this episode as well. And more ghostly stuff!  
> \- Lots of curse words this half, I'm not sure why. I probably could have edited them out but it took away from the urgency and 'holy fuck we're doing this'-ness of the situation(s).  
> \- Angst, self-blame, waterworks, just all of it. Tugging on your heartstrings. I get wordy, too, but y'all be used to that if you've made it this far.  
> \- **Edit:** Someone was kind enough to mention that I mixed up my magical terms. Eliot has telekinesis, not telepathy (which is reading minds, like Penny) so I've corrected my mistake in all previous chapters and this one as well. Thank you kind citizen! <3  
> \- Again, I am my own beta so any spelling errors or typos or weird inconsistencies I've missed are my fault. You have my apologies in advance.
> 
> Thank you to all of you who still read this, I'm glad I have some that still enjoy it so much, and I hope this second half of the episode was worth the wait. <3 Enjoy.

\--

Episode 508: The Gang Plays ‘Pass the Dead Magician’ (Continued)

\--

_The Library_

-

Taking that step out of the mediation room and into the blood red hallway of the living side of The Library was more surreal than any of the other thousand experiences Quentin had had to deal with since he’d died. And not in the dejavu kind of way. The colors were _so_ bright, the lights blaring from the sconces on the walls glared and gleamed in spiral patterns, and it was stifling hot. For some reason he could tell, here, that he couldn’t breathe, and for a moment he thought he was drowning. Submersed in a hot tub that bubbled and flowed as he felt ever speck of magic that moved through the space around them. If not for the silver thread tying him to the pocketwatch in Eliot’s hand, he would have been swept away on a current to who knew where. Quentin wasn’t even sure if he was standing on his own two feet anymore - or if he even had feet.

Every single superficial aspect of his body that he’d had in the Anti-Verse and the Underworld was now gone. His hair wasn’t really hair, his clothes weren’t really clothes, his feet weren’t really feet. He wasn’t actually walking, or breathing, or blinking or seeing. He didn’t know what he was. 

“Quentin?” Eliot’s voice was so far away, warbled because he didn’t even have fucking ears anymore. What was he? Where was he? How was any of this even fucking possible? “Quentin, stay with me - you’re kind of going in and out of focus. Like shitty TV reception.” Quentin tried, he really did, to find Eliot’s face. To look him in the eyes, to ground himself in something real and familiar, but he couldn’t even tell which direction Eliot was standing because he didn’t know where he was really facing. He was a spirit goddamnit, he was looking everywhere and nowhere because _he didn’t actually have eyes_. He was panicking.

“Q?” 

That was a voice he knew.

His vision focused, spiraling in from all directions as if adjusting a pair of binoculars; and standing in front of him was Julia. Eliot was still saying something, standing somewhere beside her where she’d rushed up to greet him, but it was like Quentin was having tunnel vision with all his senses. Julia nodded in understanding to Eliot, gave him a quick smile, and went back to watching Quentin with warm brown eyes that shone in an array of colors. A kaleidoscope in her irises, a pulse in her veins that sparkled and glittered iridescence. She was different, something was very different, but she still looked as beautiful as Quentin remembered her - and felt like home. Like childhood and nostalgia and love and pain and everything wonderful and terrible about living. It helped ground him, and soon everything else was coming into focus as well. They had made it out of the hallway, somehow, and were standing in a rich mahogany room lined with full bookshelves and lit by gas lamps that flickered with real pinches of fire. Eliot was still there, a wary panic in his eyes that was beginning to fade now that Quentin had centered himself, and beside him was Alice looking exactly the same as she had the day he died. 

He was even able to look at himself, down at his translucent form that was an exact replica of what he’d looked like the entire time he’d been dead, but he could see through his shoes to the floor below. His skin was more pale, his clothes muted like a picture taken in bad lighting, and then the stars aligned and everything made sense.

“Holy shit, I’m a ghost.” Because of course he was. But how could they all see him? Penny had been a ghost, he’d interacted with ghosts, they were invisible - on a separate plane of existence. Was it because he was latched onto something that transcended all the realities? His eyes narrowed to the watch in Eliot’s hand, and followed it as he placed it in the front pocket of his vest, on his abdomen just to the left of his navel, and Quentin’s eyes stayed trained there longer than was probably appropriate. 

“How do you feel?” Julia asked, coming up to him and stopping just a few inches so they were as close as they could be without touching. She was all warmth and soft smiles, and her presence felt as solid as if she had reached out and taken his hands. He wished with all his heart that she could have. 

“Not myself,” Quentin answered honestly, looking down to his dress shoes again and marveling that he could make out the planks of wood beneath them. “It’s hard to focus on anything.”

“You’re kind of shuttering in and out,” Julia told him, but with a look of understanding like it was all normal. How did she always seem to stay so calm in the face of anything?

“You’re different,” Quentin said, looking through her to those thrumming veins and pulsing magic that pumped through her heart and lungs. “What did you do? Are you a goddess again?”

Julia just smiled a little wider and shook her head, a secret behind her eyes that he couldn’t quite read. “I’m something else. I don’t exactly know yet - but we can figure it out later. First, let’s get you stuffed in a jar.” She turned and kept her arm extended as if to help usher him further into the room. If she could have touched him she would have taken his wrist or hand, and Quentin felt that longing for connection - for life - stronger than ever before. The absence of that reassurance alone left an ache in the space where his chest should have been. 

They stopped dead center in the room with Alice, the two girls maneuvering him and keeping a healthy six inches of distance, while Eliot bee-lined for the desk at the back corner that supported a golden urn swirling and shimmering with more magic of many colors. That was his spirit jar, the one Eliot had made all by himself - or at least Quentin assumed as much. Eliot was back on his strict time-table. Once again out in the world where the ticking seconds passing him by chipped away at the man in precise, painful strikes. Quentin could see it more clearly than the physical things around him. He was more intune with the things beneath the surface now that he was mostly submerged himself.

He turned his haunting gaze to Alice next, who was watching him back with such a guarded expression Quentin wouldn’t have been able to pick it apart and decipher it if he hadn’t been dead. She was apprehensive of him, and his state, keeping her arms crossed and holding on tight to her sweater sleeves as she did so - so she wouldn’t risk touching him after Eliot had warned them not to. The defensive stance was more than enough of a message, even without the array of warring emotions he could see that glistened like perspiration on her pale skin: sadness, fear, hope, an aged anger that was very justified - Quentin knew - and an uncomfortable awkwardness that she was trying her best to not share with everyone else.

Spoiler: it was still awkward as fuck. Even Quentin could feel that, and he was dead. The dead didn’t give two shits about awkwardness.

“It’ll all be over soon, Q,” Alice told him, in lue of anything else that could have been said. If all went as planned there would be time to address everything hanging in the air between them - things that needed to be talked about. After. That damn word was everywhere, he couldn’t escape it. His ‘after’ was becoming more eventful than his ‘previously on’, and his face twitched to a half smile. It must have shuttered into existence, because Alice tried to smile back but it didn’t reach her eyes in the slightest. He was something out of a horror movie, and it had to be unnerving as all get out to stand beside a ghost that couldn’t stay in focus. He was what nightmares were made of.

Glancing around some more in a stuttering, stalled way, Quentin found the room they occupied was void of any personal effects and all furniture was pressed against the walls for storage purposes. The desk Eliot worked at had been pulled out and away to give him elbow room as he continued his preparations on the urn for the spell to come, but he glanced over his shoulder more than once to make sure that Quentin was still there. If he could see what Quentin could see then he wouldn’t have felt the need. The silver thread connecting Q to the pocketwatch was strung tight, and Q had to fight the urge to drift closer, just to lessen the tension in his chest. 

“Where is everyone?” Eliot had said it would take three or four Magicians to put him in the spirit jar. Eliot, Julia, and Alice made three - but Quentin had figured they would have an understudy as backup. Just in case El passed out in the middle of casting, which was probably more likely than the passing thought it was meant to be.

“Margo isn’t awake yet,” Alice told him, “she astral projected for a long time to help guide you to the Underworld. Penny23 is still in Fillory running the last of Eliot’s errands, by the way Eliot - he says he’s never speaking to you again after sending him to the Bone Spider.” She shot the last over towards the tall Magician still bent over the desk in concentration.

“I think I’ll live,” he answered, not the least bit sorry. “Did the exchange go okay?”

“Yep, the Bone Eater is happy as a clam, and the witch has Quentin’s collar bone,” Alice said, shifting from one foot to the other in an idle restlessness. “And I found that jacket from first year you were talking about, when we first went to Fillory. She has that too, so everything is set.”

“Good,” Eliot sighed, his shoulders relaxing just a fraction from the solid line they’d been set in for far too long. Quentin could see Eliot’s emotions clearly and plainly, now that he was watching him. If anyone in that room was apprehensive it was Eliot; he felt he had the most to lose, to fuck up, and he was stressed beyond belief. He had placed every person so carefully and with precise instructions, but to have the plan actually playing out and in motion was another thing entirely.

“Kady is in Fillory, too. She stayed to assist the forest witch with anything else she needed,” Julia mentioned in her calm and serene way. The least anxious person in the room, and really the only one talking to him like he wasn’t dead. “Your body will be complete by the time we all get there.”

“All?” Quentin heard himself ask absently.

“Of course, you think anyone is going to miss you coming back to life?” Julia teased gently. “Not for the world.”

“You’ve already bent and broken the world to bring me back,” Quentin pointed out, looking between the two woman who meant so much to him. “More than I deserve.”

“Not us,” Julia said shyly, her soft smile contagious as it eased the anxiety in Alice’s expression too. Leeching it to a soft half-smile all her own, and they both looked to Eliot. “Eliot did everything nearly all by himself, from what I heard.” She glanced at Alice and the two shared a look Quentin didn’t quite catch.

“I helped with some research,” Alice acquiesced, shrugging her shoulders modestly. “But he’s done a lot more than I ever thought he was capable of. He cast in zero gravity to make that jar, it was incredible to see.” The admiration that drifted beneath her words was not something Alice graced just anyone with. 

“He’s run himself into the ground,” Quentin found himself saying, not able to keep himself from tracing over every ache and pain and sign of fatigue. Yes, he knew Eliot had bent over backwards for him in every possible way - and he was beyond grateful -  but the agitated worry left behind like a bad taste in the mouth was something he couldn’t shake. He wanted Eliot happy, healthy, every inch the man he remembered and not the wisp of memory wrapped up in mourning and a need to fix things so strong it was eating away at him. Physically and mentally. He wanted Eliot to survive this, too.

“Q, come on,” Julia scolded him gently. “You can’t be that hypocritical about this. After everything you did for the Monster when it possessed Eliot’s body, and how you threw yourself into saving him. How could you blame him for doing the same?” Eliot finally turned around, triumphant and exhausted and holding the jar to his chest like it was a lifeline. Cradled in his arms, that golden painted ceramic more precious to him than anything in the world - because of all the possibilities it held. He’d poured his heart and soul into it, every ounce of strength he possessed and more that he had to pull from thin air, all for Quentin. “He loves you.”

This time the words didn’t hit him in a shocking way, nor did they embarrass him considering who had said them or who was standing on his other side. This time they were plain facts, and Julia had spoken them was such gentle truth and solidarity that Quentin could feel them brush against him and sink beneath his skin. He didn’t dare to look at Julia or Alice in a way that showed in his astral form, but he could see everything around him as he kept facing forward. Eliot with the jar, finally coming within earshot but having just missed what Julia said. Julia herself content and witnessing something she wasn’t willing to share. And Alice trying so hard not to watch him out of the corner of her eyes, but Q was surprised to find her emotional storm had actually steadied at Julia’s statement. Alice knew it, too, then - and she wasn’t bitter or angry or betrayed. What she was, was something they would have to discuss just to clear the air. After. But he felt a warmth of acceptance in his chest, the apprehension he couldn’t quite capture (usually his basest state of being) eased even in it’s muted state, and he was grateful to her. More than words could say.

“You all do,” he said, just as soft and true. Eliot looked confused at his words, but Julia beamed and Alice’s half-smile stayed up just a little easier. He could feel it, the strength of that love coming from each of them in different radiance and sources. But just as strong, and Quentin was glad it was these three people there with him. He knew that logically they were the most adept to do the spell, Eliot having proven how much more power he had than even he knew he could procure, but they were also the ones who loved him the most. That gave them the added edge, the extra push that would help them complete the impossible task before them, and Quentin also knew Eliot had been the one to arrange it that way. Alice may have been surprised that Eliot was so resourceful with what was available to him, but Quentin wasn’t. He spent 50 years with the other man, an entire life of learning all his strengths and pitfalls, his limits and his drives - he knew what Eliot could do. Probably better than the man himself. 

He wouldn’t have put his fate in anyone else’s hands. Despite his harsh words before, back in the mediation room, and everything unspoken he’d wanted to spit like fire - Eliot could be the one that beat all the odds no matter how well they were stacked against them. He always found a way.

Quentin loved that beautiful idiot more than anything.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” Eliot asked, wary once more of the intense expression Quentin couldn’t control. His form was see-through, for fuck’s sake, he couldn’t do anything to school his expression or hide how his emotions that he still had access to raged through him. He could barely decipher them, himself. “Is something wrong?”

“Everything’s kind of fucked, and I can’t control my face,” Q said with a grin that probably didn’t pair well with the dark look in his eyes. “I don’t even really have a face.”

“That’s - disturbing,” Eliot drawled, momentarily shaken from his anxiety and sounding more like himself. “But true, I suppose.”

“You’re honestly handling this better than I thought you would,” Alice mentioned off-handedly. “You crossed realms without a body to stabilize you, most souls wouldn’t be able to ground themselves.”

“We’ve got an ace in the hole,” Quentin said with that same unsettled grin, looking to Eliot’s vest pocket again and tracing the silver thread that connected him to what was inside it. At a glance it was like he was actually connected to Eliot, and that did things to his heart and libido that would have given him palpitations. Eliot reached into the pocket, following Q’s dark empty stare to where the clocktree watch stayed settled ticking against his stomach. When he touched it, bringing it out to show Alice and Julia, the silver pocketwatch was small enough to remain on his extended fingers - and Quentin’s lips parted feeling the thrumming blood, the magic trickling between the long digits and settled into his fingertips like fine dust. It buzzed throughout his body as well, his very soul warming at other man’s touch. He couldn’t tell how much it showed on the visage that was his face, but Eliot was watching him so closely and carefully he had to have noticed something. 

“His spirit is connected to it, and we need to go ahead and get him unattached and in the jar,” Eliot said, words low and rumbling and Quentin could feel that thrum through him as well. “He shouldn’t stay latched onto it for too long.”

“Okay, let’s do this then,” Alice said, nodding and also watching Quentin but he could no longer feel it. “I know you want to get to Fillory as soon as possible and if Penny isn’t back yet you’ll have to use the fountain.”

“What, why?” Eliot snapped, looking at her with wide eyes beneath the dark smudges his nap had done nothing to lessen. Her words the first hiccup in his plan, and it concerned a big transition.

“The Library’s resources are zapped, we’re still deteriorating faster than we can stall with the spells from Lü Dongbin. I can’t just teleport you there.” She at least looked sorry to have to break it to him, but as far as wrenches being thrown in their plans it could have been a lot worse. 

“It’ll be fine,” Julia told Eliot, and somehow the words - when strung together would sound so empty from anyone else - were at least somewhat sincere and Eliot had to bite his tongue from snapping at her too. There was no way to know everyone would be fine, and Eliot _hated_ the word ‘fine’. They’d had their share of fights around it, back in their lives in Fillory. Now, with how high the stakes were, Eliot was boiling at the mere suggestion, and Quentin could see it bubbling up his throat like bile. 

“El,” Q said quietly, catching the other man’s manic attention, eyes wide as the approaching attack on his entire being crept closer and closer to the point of no return. Eliot had this disastrous flirtation with the concept of control; wherein he would be able to control such things as his telekinesis, his appearance, his life and everything around it - but it so easily dipped to the peril of _losing_ control. Whether it be alcohol and drugs, sleep deprivation, or just poor life decisions. He knew better, was aware of the slip of control, and often times was the main reason for it occurring at all. The only thing he needed was a voice of reason to remind him of that fact, and although Margo was certainly the best person at excelling in that field - Quentin had 50 years of experience on his side. “Where do you need me?” 

Eliot blinked and his whole face changed. He looked to the urn still tucked close to his chest under one arm, and the small pocketwatch in his opposite hand, and came back to himself. Remembered, before he slipped down that slope and off a cliff. He was Eliot fucking Waugh, and he had this.

"You're fine where you are," he told Quentin, a spark of nostalgic recollection sent in a careful glance, using the very word that had almost made him lose his shit. It had taken him almost 20 years to make that joke the first time, and they both remembered that day well. Quentin smiled, and Eliot’s lips twitched into a semblance of one as well. He had this. "Ladies, if you'll take your positions then we will get rolling. Apparently, I have a lovely sprint ahead of me all the way to the Fillory fountain." 

Quentin stayed where he was, neither standing nor floating, and in some arguable ways not even actually existing. But he watched the three Magicians move around him; drawing chalk lines on the floor, lighting something in a bowl on fire so it smoked like incense, and Eliot placing the urn and pocketwatch on the ground inside the diagram on the hardwood floor. Barely a foot away from Quentin. He felt the absence of warmth, of life, leave his bones (not that he actually had any, but that was the closest description he could come to compare the sensation) as soon as Eliot left it there. Q was still tied to the watch, the silver thread hanging not as tightly nor as comforting. Quentin felt adrift at sea without Eliot holding the watch or having it on his person.

With a loud clap of his hands, Eliot shook sensation back into his arms and body, waking himself up and shaking off the jitters that threatened to plague his fingers. Nervous, excited, anxious and ready for it to be over - but Quentin could also see a tiny seed of dread buried in his mind. Dread at how much ground they still had to cover after this spell.

Everyone was on point, there was no one that dared suggest otherwise. But it was Game Day, after all - but they were only at halftime. There was still so much to lose.

Since when had he started thinking in sports metaphors?

-

Once the three living Magicians began their casting the very ambiance in the room shifted. Everything dimmed with no access to natural light, the air grew thin and hard to breathe without a change in altitude, and a warm breeze grew from nowhere to brush against them. Even Quentin felt all of it, and he didn’t have a body yet. 

 _Yet_. 

He watched Eliot, Julia, and Alice in equidistant positions, feet together and standing tall in the proper Ellison stance used for cooperative magic. Hands, fingers, circular motions, and chanted words all in tandem as they moved through the complex spell. No one had a book or diagram near them for reference, but they didn’t miss a beat either. Julia moved through the motions with a calm tranquility that befit her new state of being, although Quentin still couldn’t put a name to the creature she had become with magic sunk deep beneath her skin. Alice had the calm studious look that she always did, confident in her motions and abilities, and in her element of excellence. Eliot had a determined set to his face, his eyes, pulling his lips down into a half frown as he went through motions and words he’d repeated so many times they were ingrained in his very being. He had worked the hardest to be there, but once the spell and casting began to flow from him it came in a steady and reliant stream - natural talent of adaptation for once paired with study and concentration that placed him at a higher level than he deemed himself worthy of. But he was insanely capable, and formidable in that moment in what he could do. In what he _knew_ he could do. It was kind of sexy, and it made Quentin smirk to himself. So lost in his observations that he didn’t notice when the wind had started to pick up further.

It was beginning to tug on him. Pulled at his clothes, tousled his hair, _touched_ and interacted with him in a way that shouldn’t have been possible. The first real sensations that he’d been able to feel since stepping into the sweltering hot hallway outside the mediation room. He’d grown used to feeling the heavy press of living, existing entities against his soul - even pushing through him and taking back the space he wasn’t allowed to occupy. But now the wind was trying to carry him away, and he looked down to his dress shoes half expecting to see himself sliding across the floor.

“This feels weird, guys,” he told them, not sure if they could even hear him over the casting of the spell. The way they stared at nothing, eyes locked on a distant point of existence, hands moving in circular motions, fingers bent in impossible ways, a dead language falling from their tongues, it was just as unnerving as the wild wind that had begun to really pull and push at Quentin. He looked around from his spot in the center of their equilateral triangle, afraid to move and also afraid he would get knocked out of position and ruin the spell. The wind wasn’t rattling the lamps or furniture, it barely moved stray strands of hair in Eliot’s face or curling around Julia’s shoulders, the heat wasn’t flushing their faces or making them sweat, and the juxtaposition made alarm bells go off in Quentin’s head. He knew it was the spell, told himself so over and over until he started actually mumbling it under his breath as he continued to look around frantically. “It’s just the spell, it’s just the spell.” 

Voices rang in his ears at a deafening volume, resonating like the fucking church bells of Notre Dame, and it took far too long for Quentin to recognize the voices as the ones of his friends surrounding him. He’d put his hands to his ears to try and quell the overwhelming sound, but it did nothing. It sounded right through him, blared mercilessly, and made his whole spiritual form ripple and shiver, while the unforgiving wind pushed at him harder. His shoes slid on the floor and he scrambled to try and stay centered, only for the wind to pull back, then forward again. It circled round and round and formed a mini tornado in the damn room with Quentin was at its center. The urn pulsed gold, the watch pulsed silver, out of sync but in a way that resembled the rabbit-fast racing of the heart Quentin didn’t possess - but he still felt it choking him in his throat. The silver thread whipped in the wind, threatening to snap, and in that instant Quentin knew how the spell was supposed to work. 

Fuck, this was going to suck. 

“Hey!” he shouted over the wind, looking right at Eliot who focused his eyes enough to see Quentin’s face in the wreckage of the spell. He knew he looked scared, and nervous, and not 100% sure of anything anymore except that the vortex was about to literally suck him into the urn like a genie in a bottle. “Don’t take too long, okay?” Eliot almost missed a step, half a second from tripping over a syllable that probably would have fucked everything up, but he managed to convey with a look alone that he wasn’t going to let Quentin down. Q knew this, could see how paper thin the man had spread himself already, and was ready to do so even more. He hated everything about this, but it was too late to turn back. 

The silver thread snapped, with the devastation of a thin metal wire. It whipped back and shattered everything, breaking the barrier inside the triangle, and Q was finally blown off his feet.

The spell stretched him thin, as thin as Eliot looked, and Quentin felt like his head was about to float away from his body. Everything blurred, grew too bright, and spun out of control all at the same time. It was too much, he wanted to squeeze his eyes shut to block it all out but couldn’t. 

Then darkness took over, stillness, a calm cold like stone, and he breathed in relief.

He was in a dark room, and it felt so nice after everything pressing down on him. It took Quentin the longest time to realize he was in the urn on the floor. It had worked, and that was more comforting than the cool darkness. Now all he could do was wait, and hope - but hope was what he excelled at. They were old friends, and it was nice to rely on it again.

“Good luck, El.”

-

As soon as the tornado of light and color that had once been Quentin’s soul spun into the open urn, Eliot broke his hand position and threw his telekinesis like a damn frisbee - slamming the lid shut and holding it there as the three raced inside the diagram on the floor. Eliot held the jar down, using both his hands pressing down with all his weight (which wasn’t a lot these days) and his telekinetic powers that were probably equivalent to a metric ton. But the urn still squirmed and threatened to break away like a living animal. Julia and Alice flanked him, combining a sealing spell that would hold Q inside the jar until they reached Fillory. The spell weaved back and forth between them delicately, the most intricate bow on the most delicate and violent package, but they didn’t falter or even blink as they completed the spell like the pros they were. Eliot felt when the spell took hold of the jar, calming it to stillness, and he carefully let go of the lid. Red indents left behind on his hands where the top of the jar fought him, pressed so heavily they would probably bruise, but the jar didn’t move once he let it go. It was sealed. 

They fucking did it.

Not even bothering to rise to his feet, Eliot took the jar and cradled it against his chest just like before, held tight with both arms and he allowed himself to exhale. Really breathe for what felt like the first time in a long time. Quentin was out of the underworld, he was successfully captured in the world of the living, and Eliot could actually hold him - disembodied spirit in a jar aside. Julia took his elbow and helped him stand without letting go of the jar, watching him carefully while Alice eyed him like he was about to go into cardiac arrest. Eliot decided to not mention how light-headed he felt. The amount of energy that had been drained from him in the past half hour was going to get him in a lot of trouble with a lot of people - but what else was new.

So with a smile that was both a carefully constructed front, and yet somehow easier to hold than before, he looked to the women in front of him and sighed contentedly. “To Fillory.” 

The Library teleportation spells would have been so much easier, faster, not necessarily the safest since Eliot wasn’t entirely certain about the circumstances surrounding the spirit jar; but they didn’t really have time to complain. Alice led the way out of the Library, up many levels and stairs and past far too many people that kept trying to stop them and talk to her. She ignored every single one of them, without a backwards glance or apology, and Eliot had never felt so proud. They finally reached the exit doors towards what was considered some of the top levels of the building, since the majority of The Library was underground, and Eliot sprinted so fast behind her he didn’t even feel the cold creeping in.

Until it smacked him in the face outside the large double doors. He slipped on the ice beneath his feet and did a very dramatic, Charlie Chaplin-esque scramble to right himself without falling on his ass, and he clutched the spirit jar so tightly a normal urn would have shattered. The entire Neitherlands was a snowscape, swirling winds of bitter cold and snowflakes the size of golfballs, and ice glazed everything as far as the eye could see. Eliot stared around, confused and horrified - were the fountains frozen?

“Since when do you fucking have winter?” Eliot yelled over the wind, towards Alice as she looked around in obvious confusion. She had to be freezing in her short skirt. 

“Not for another few months!” Alice shouted back, hugging herself and glancing over her shoulder at the closed Library doors. “It shouldn’t be like this!”

“The realms are collapsing,” Julia said, not needing to shout and barely bracing against the bitter wind. Snowflakes caught in her long hair and sweater only to hang there like accessories, once with the landscape no matter where she went. “With magic leaking away the worlds are out of balance, and it’s having an affect on the atmosphere.”

“Magic _leaving_ is doing this?” Eliot questioned.

“No, magic being drained away is leaving the worlds trying to balance on their own physical merit. Which is often times impossible. Science is doing this. Reality. Without magic as a crutch it all falls apart.”

“No one told me about this,” Alice said in anger. “Why wouldn’t they mention that winter had come in the middle of summer?” It was another important piece of the overall puzzle they were trying to solve. 

“Maybe they haven’t been outside?” Julia offered. 

“It doesn’t matter right now,” Eliot yelled bluntly. “We need to get to the Fillory fountain and pray it isn’t fucking frozen!” He turned and began to half jog, half slide down the cement walkways that wove through the Library buildings. He could barely make out anything further than 20 feet in front of him, but he knew exactly where the Fillory fountain was and time was pressing even more heavily on top of them. If the Neitherlands was in this kind of shape, who knew what kind of mess Fillory was falling into. They needed to get back and put Q in his body before it was too late. 

The two suns that circled the Netherlands, creating days that were longer than the majority of the realms they held portals to, fought to break through the cloud cover with all their might. In some places, as the three slipped and slid their way through the maze of fountains, one of the suns managed to stream through and offer a couple ounces of warmth. Some light in the vast wasteland of gray and white. Eliot could feel heat at his back, and for a moment he thought it was the sun until it began to burn a bit as if standing next to a heater. He glanced over his shoulder and Alice was keeping pace behind him with a literal ball of fire rotating between her pale fingers. It continuously rolled and roiled, and Eliot was more than certain it was a bomb that she planned on using if the fountain was indeed frozen over. 

Thank God he was friends with literal magical geniuses. 

They reached the Fillory fountain and about killed themselves getting down the steps. Eliot didn’t stop sprinting, nor did he slow as he finally got a glimpse of the surface of the water. It was liquid, rippling, capturing snowflakes that melted into it sluggishly - and Eliot didn’t even pause to take a final breath before he strode up to the lip of the fountain, stepped up and over and dove straight into the ice cold water. He barely heard Alice and Julia shouting at him to wait - that the fountain might not work. They needed to wait and test it first. He wouldn’t have stopped even if he had the ability to slow his momentum.

He was done waiting. 

-

_Fillory_

-

Golden light glistened on the surface of the water Eliot appeared in. He was 20 feet below the surface, clothes heavy and pulling him down, but the water was leagues warmer than what he had jumped into in the Nietherlands. Why the hell was he appearing under water? With quick kicks and one arm pulling himself through the water, Eliot broke into the open air and gasped sweet oxygen - with the same trace of opium lacing every molecule. It gave everything a slight taste of bergamot. 

The Neitherland portal had changed its output, depositing Eliot in what looked like the far East side of the Queenswood near the coast. He spit out salt water, letting the waves help push him towards the shore of white chipped rock beaches and overbearingly tall cliffs. Whitespire glistened in the distance, and the royal marina sat settled far to his left appearing as small white specs on the water. Bath toys in comparison to their normal size. The beaming sun felt good after the cold winterscape he’d just left, and the golden urn under his arm was surprisingly buoyant - helping keep him afloat as he paddled one handed towards the shore.

Upside, this was actually closer to the witch’s cottage. Downside, there was no way for him to contact Penny and get a free ride - so it saved no time whatsoever. Another wrench in his plan. Eliot had only begun grumbling and cursing every corner of the fucking universe when he saw something standing on the beach. At first he thought it was a dog, but as his feet touched the sharp rocky bottom of the shallows he could see it was actually a horse - and a horse he knew. A black and white paint that shifted its feet impatiently, and watched him wade through the water with a look of annoyance as if Eliot was taking his sweet ass time on purpose. 

“Oh joy, just who I wanted to come to my rescue,” Eliot said, loud enough that he knew the horse could hear it. “How’d you find us?” The forest witch’s horse didn’t even bother with a response, just leveled him with a look behind stupidly long eyelashes and a mane full of sea spray that told Eliot he didn’t deserve a proper answer. “Witch, got it. I guess you’re my ride.” It could have been worse. His new mantra, bitter and condescending as it felt. 

“What the actual fuck!?” 

From _way_ out on the water, where Eliot had broken through after the Fillory fountain decided to take a field trip, three figures floated on the waves. He could make out Alice and Julia as they were closer, but he didn’t need to see that far to know who had just come through the fountain as well. 

“Glad you could join us!” Eliot hollered as loud as he could over the roaring sea. The tiny bronze, dark haired figure that was the furthest out raised a hand at him. Eliot didn’t need to see that far to know Margo was flipping him off, either. She must have followed them when they were racing through the winter Neitherlands. At least some things were coming together.

“Go!” Alice shouted at him, swimming towards shore with a technique that showed someone had been on a swim team at some point in their lives. She was almost to the shallows already. “We’ll catch up!”

“You heard the lady,” Eliot said to the horse. It snorted at him and turned a bit, prancing on the sharp rocks and sighing at him to get a move on. He didn’t even have a saddle. Eliot swung himself up on the paint’s back, gripping his mane with one hand and clutching the urn to his body with the other, knees and feet cinched into the barrel of the horse’s body and praying he could hold on tight enough. 

“I’m not about to start flying, loosen your legs before you pull something,” the horse grumbled at him, and began a quick walk up the beach as it picked its way through the field of sharp stone. 

“Why didn’t the witch send Penny to pick me up? Save you the trouble of scuffing up your horse shoes.” Eliot asked, leaning closer to the paint’s neck to try and maneuver with the muscles in its shoulders and back. Without a saddle or blanket to cushion him, it wasn’t just about balance as he tried to stay on the back of the horse. Every shift and twitch was felt as it rolled beneath the horse’s hide, and he knew the horse felt him just as much as he sat directly on its spine. If this was supposed to be the more natural way to ride, Eliot wasn’t feeling it.

“The traveler is running errands for your spell,” the horse told him, making it to the edge of the beach and then climbing through a series of quick, forty-five-degree angle jumps up the tall grass slopes towards the forest above them. Eliot near slid off the horse’s back with each jump. “Also, I know he’s not too happy with you about the bone collector, so he’s probably taking his time.” Now Penny was talking shit about him with a horse, they probably hit it off the moment they met.

Penny and his fucking childish, vindictive streak. “That is the most polite giant spider I could have ever sent him to!” Eliot protested, snagging his hand in the paint’s mane and holding on for dear life with the urn nestled in front of him like an infant. 

Only once they were level again, the horse finding the Queensroad easily in the thick forest and also relaxing at the paved dirt under its hooves, Eliot sat up - tall and regal as he could be in a damp vest and slacks with his dark curls in his face. He probably didn’t look too bad, but his silk button down clung to his skin and his oxfords were filled with water. He didn’t want to think about his socks and the way water sloshed around inside his shoes when he wiggled his toes. Not his most dignified moment, and now he got to ride a horse through the Queenswood sopping wet and bareback. There was a good sex joke in there somewhere, but he was too exhausted to exploit it. “Is it too much to ask for one leg of instant transportation in this mission?”

“You could walk this, too, you know. Might make it by nightfall if you run.” 

“Just shut up and trot.”

With a jolt that left Eliot’s heart and lungs behind them, the horse took off at a canter - the forest flying by and all of Eliot’s remaining whims and strength focused on staying atop the damn animal, and not letting go of the spirit jar. His heart thumped against it, he had it pressed so closely to his chest, and he wondered if Q could hear it in here. With his head ducked down and half leaned over the paint’s neck once more, he let the spirited animal take the lead as it carried him through the Queenswood, not caring that his knees and feet were once again clasped tightly to the horse’s sides. The last thing he needed was his long legs getting tangled up with a horses - it didn’t matter how tall he was, Eliot lost that battle the instant it happened. 

He couldn’t help but be impressed with the black and white paint’s stamina - it rode hard for almost two hours. Sweat slicking it’s hide and nostrils flaring as it took each turn in the road quick and precise. It had to know these roads better than anything, and Eliot was silently grateful the witch had sent her horse. He wasn’t going to tell the horse that, though, it already had enough of an attitude problem. Ego was not needed in the mix.

-

They reached the cabin in record time, with it’s candy garden flourishing and filling the air with the sickly sweet smell of hardened fruit sugars and peppermint. The enchanted plants made a gorgeous view as the sun was just beginning to fall in the sky, golden light glistening through the hard candies like stained glass, and Eliot couldn’t help marveling for a moment at the wonderful, ridiculous, beautiful and just fucking weird land Fillory was. For one of the most pinnacle moments in his life the land had been his; he ruled it as High King, he had called it home without knowing that he would ever be able to leave, embracing it no matter what obstacles were thrown at him. But for the last few days he hadn’t looked at Fillory as a home, former or otherwise. It had been reduced to merely a bottom line - a location for his spell, a way to get what he wanted successfully, a means to an end. Or vice versa, whatever. But it was truly beautiful, and deserved more than his passing convenience on what it had to offer, or the nostalgia it held and represented like a living memory.

Much like something else he had neglected far too much.

His grip on the spirit jar that held Quentin’s soul was practically fused to the ceramic. He hadn’t jostled or readjusted it the whole ride in fear it would slip through his fingers, and he could barely feel his hand or forearm because of it, but Eliot liked to tell himself he could still feel Q inside. The horse slowed to a trot as it clopped up the cobblestone walkway, panting and eager to be home. Eliot was also exhausted, the hard ride had given him no sense of rest at all as he had spent it trying to stay balanced with muscles locked up to keep him on the horse. He straightened when the horse slowed, and felt his spine pop in three places painfully as he did so. His legs unfolded from where he’d had them clamped to the horse's sides, and the ache in his joints made him feel 70 years old again. Not a good time in his life. 

Also, the front of his vest and shirt were soaked in sweat from the horse’s back - and he bet his thighs were chaffed. But they were there. They had made it to the witch’s cottage, the sun was still up (kind of), and Quentin’s spirit jar was still held in his arms completely in tact. They had a chance.

From the shadows underneath the thatch-roof awning of the witch’s cabin, Kady materialized and stepped out into the late afternoon sun. Arms crossed and watching Eliot approach with an eyebrow raised in disbelief. 

“I want to take a picture, but I also don’t want to fan your ego,” Kady said plainly, smirking openly. “You realize you literally just rode in on a horse looking like something out of a fucking romance novel.”

“How in the world someone would have the strength to bang after that is beyond me,” Eliot lamented, groaning when the horse came to a stop in front of the cottage as his whole world kept moving around him. His body wanted the momentum to keep moving forward and protested achingly when it didn’t. “I might need help getting down.”

“Today, if you don’t mind,” the horse rasped grumpily. Something in its eyes saying it had half a mind to just buck Eliot off to get rid of him.

“You really have no idea how to take care of yourself, do you,” Kady teased, but reached up and helped pry Eliot from the horse’s back. One stiff leg and hip at a time. He landed on his feet, thankfully, and hissed at how his feet stung form touching the ground after the constant vibration of riding for 2 hours. “You can’t ride for hours on end when you haven’t been on a horse in a year. We’re not 18, we don’t just bounce back like we used to. You feel old yet?”

“I’m feeling it now, Mr. Krabs,” Eliot bemoaned, letting Kady sling his one free arm around her shoulders to help guide him into the house. “As soon as the world stops hurting me, I’ll be good to go.”

“You’re going to fall flat on your face, and I’m going to laugh.”

“Just don’t kick me.”

“I won’t, but no promises on Penny,” Kady said.

“For fucks sake, it’s a giant spider not Satan,” Eliot practically whined, griping loudly in hopes Penny was inside the cottage. “You’d think I’d told him to-”

“Go make a deal with a bone collecting spider demon the size of an elephant?” Penny griped right back. Indeed, he had been just inside the door, standing there like the creeper he was. “Who is conveniently missing bones of a traveler in it’s collection? No, why would I be pissed about that?”

“You said you were fine with spiders,” Eliot pointed out. Kady deposited him into the same arm chair he’d taken up back when the witch had found him and Margo on the road. It felt so damn good to sit down. He leaned his head back and sighed, relaxing his hold on the spirit jar now that it was settled safely in his lap.

“ _Little ones_ ,” Penny snapped. “Like the size of my hand at most. The damn thing wouldn’t fit inside this house!”

“As always, your reluctant assistance is abundantly appreciated,” Eliot told him airily, closing his eyes for a moment and reminding himself of all the good things in life. Real French champagne, designer suits, silk lounge robes, a completed checklist that didn’t have a thousand hick-ups or participants yelling in his face about shit. 

“And your compliments are insincere as shit,” Penny grumbled.

“No one’s perfect,” Eliot grinned tiredly, but savored another moment of sitting before he forced himself to his feet. Shaky and not at all ready for the next step. But they were so damn close. It was almost over.

“You seriously look like shit,” Kady told him, leaning her hip against the back of the chair and keeping a careful eye out. Prepared to catch him if he did indeed topple over to fall flat on his face. Bless her.

“I’m aware,” Eliot said unapologetically. “You, however, look radiant. Care to lead the way to dear Q’s new body? Hopefully it’s actually ready, I don’t know how much time we have to work with.”

“It looks ready, Sybil is out back finishing up the last touches,” said Kady, turning to lead the way out a door Eliot hadn’t even seen the last time he was there. It led to the back garden - another thing he hadn’t seen - and the stable that housed the witch’s talking horse. 

“Sybil is…”

Kady glared at him. “The witch who’s been breaking her fucking back for you? Did you never ask her name?”

Eliot at least had the decency to look ashamed as he shook his head. “I don’t know the horse’s either, and it just carried me all the way from the coastline at a flat out run.” What could he say, he could be kind of an inconsiderate shithead to everyone when he was focused on one thing as intently as he had been. 

“It’s Novik,” the horse spat at, leaning over the stable door to glare at him. It sounded considerably more hydrated and less winded, but still as tired as Eliot felt. “And you’re welcome.” It trailed off into grumbles that were very unkind and probably justified. He owed it a thousand thank yous and a barrel of apples, just to start. Eliot managed to stumble over to tell the horse his first of many thank yous, aiming for sincere and not condescending, when the witch appeared from behind a mess of tall ferns that smelled a lot like mint chocolate.

“Oh good, you’re here,” she said, wiping her mud stained hands on her apron and nodding back the way she had come. “Follow me, the body is done growing. We need to move it inside.”

Eliot raised his hand, not even ashamed at how his fingers still trembled from all he’d put himself through the past week. “I will be of no use carrying a body.”

Pretty much everyone rolled their eyes, even Novik the horse. “Fine, you two come with me. You - sit down before you fall down,” Sybil said to Eliot, looking him up and down and shaking her head. She had said the same thing last time, and Eliot looked no better despite all the work the centaurs had put into healing him. He did as he was told, and went back to set Quentin’s urn in his chair. He helped clear some of the room for the spell, using both his hands and his telekinesis since his movements were still a little stiff, but he made enough space to fit a man Quentin’s size on the work table. He’d assumed that’s where they were going to put him. It had already been partially cleared off. 

“You are terrible at following instructions,” the old witch’s voice scolded him as she approached the table. Kady and Penny weren’t too far behind, carrying what was very obviously a body wrapped up in brown, dirt-stained burlap and placed it on the table. It hit the weathered wood with a hollow sound, solid and unforgiving as stone. This felt more like an autopsy than a resurrection, and Eliot swallowed hard in nervousness. With careful hands Sybil peeled back the tarp around the head of the body, and all the breath left Eliot’s lungs. The spell had worked even more perfectly than he had thought it would, now that he could be honest with himself and the result in front of him. He was looking down on Quentin’s face, every line and contour exactly where it should be. His hair was as long as it had been during the end of first year, the shape of his shoulders and chest matching what used to be his build before the centaurs had to give him a wooden collarbone and arm. 

“Your friends said it was very close, were they right?” The witch asked, but the look on her face said she already knew the answer. Eliot’s own expression, devastated with hope, threatened to shatter if he so much as blinked. He nodded numbly, and helped pull back the tarp even more to check the arms, chest, wrists and fingers, his own hands still shaking but no longer from fatigue. He picked up the hand closest to him and threaded his fingers through the cold ones still dusted with dirt. They fit just how he remembered. 

“It’s perfect.” He laid the hand back on the table, the skin cold and lifeless and not something he needed to focus on, then without hesitation pulled the tarp up a bit to glance down and make sure everything below the waist was in tact as well. As funny as it would have been, he wasn’t going to make Q unintentionally flash Kady and Penny - although he did have half a mind to. 

“Seriously, Eliot!” Kady yelled.

“I’m just checking her work,” he drawled, raising an eyebrow at her and lowering the tarp to cover most of Quentin’s new body once more. “Unless you wanted to?”

“I’ve been here for like three days, I’ve seen more of Quentin than I ever needed to see. Ever.” 

“You have my sympathies,” Eliot said evenly, then turned to Sybil with a new wind in his sails. Probably the last one, if he was honest, he’d been running on adrenaline and sheer force of will for far too long. “What’s next.”

“You have his soul sealed up?” Sybil asked, turning to look at the spirit jar sitting as still as stone in the arm chair. “Then we need to revive the body first. A soul can’t enter a dead body, that’s just an unpleasant affair for everyone.”

“And Umber had something about zombies, so I assume it’s not even possible,” Eliot pointed out.

“I wouldn’t want to test the waters,” the forest witch said, turning to one of her back tables for ingredients that looked mostly like swamp sludge and lumps of clay. “Hope none of you are squeamish. This is going to get messy.” 

-

By the end everyone’s hands and clothes were stained in mud and plant matter. Quentin’s new body had intricate designs on the chest where his lungs and heart were, a concoction in his mouth that Eliot had not gagged at (he was proud to say), and more handprints of mud and sludge on his arms, hands, legs, and face. Sybil said the handprints were best to receive life, a symbol the soul would recognize - as opposed to just slathering the body in mud. Which is probably what Eliot would have done. The mud was a conductor, to wake up the new veins and muscles and nerve endings. Now they just needed to start his heart, and the rest of his organs would awaken one after the other like falling dominoes.

He wasn’t sure why he hadn’t thought of it before, but Eliot realized that when the witch said she had grown Quentin a new body - she legit meant she’d grown it. In the ground. Quentin ran on sunshine and tilled soil. 

“He’s not going to have to live off photosynthesis and rain water, is he?” Eliot asked, aware how absurd it sounded and that Sybil probably didn’t know what photosynthesis was.

“No,” she laughed anyway. “His body will be human, it’s grown from human parts, the spell merely uses Fillory’s elements to help it along until it’s ready for a soul.” She coated her hands liberally in a new mixture of mud and herbs, rubbing them together with a squelching sound that made Eliot wince, but when she pulled her hands apart instead of smacking like mud should have - it sparked. Little tendrils of electricity trailing around her fingers like snakes, threatening to reach out and shock anyone within reach. “Stand back, we have to do this right or we will lose the body.”

“You’re going to shock it?” Kady asked, dark eyes widening and stepping aside but also glancing at Quentin’s body warily. “You know that doesn’t always work.”

“You’ve revived someone before?” the witch said in a teasing tone, settling herself at the head of the table so she could better reach Quentin’s chest over his head and shoulders.

“Yeah, kind of,” Kady informed them, ceasing Sybil’s movements. “I was a volunteer medic - or I was in my fake life Fogg put me in. But it still all carried over, and I’ve used it before since I got my memories back. I know CPR, field-dressing first aid, and how to work a defibrillator. If she’s shocking the body back to life I could help.”

“How?” Sybil asked, stunned and confused - she didn’t know the first thing about CPR or counting a pulse, but Eliot at least knew what they were about, and how important they would be in the next few minutes. His mouth was open in awe and everything. In one sweeping motion he pulled Kady close and kissed her on both cheeks repeatedly. 

“Okay, okay - I get it! I’ll be on stand-by,” Kady squirmed in Eliot’s grip, but he refused to let her go. This was a game-changer, she had no idea. The one thing he hadn’t planned for, the body not actually being alive, was covered before he even had a chance to freak out over it. “I’ll check his pulse each time you shock him, we just need something we can use for Epinephrine. It increases blood flow to the heart and brain once the blood actually starts flowing, even in V-fib.”

“I have no idea what you’re saying, but I think I have something similar to that in my cabinet,” Sybil said, nodding towards a glass case against the wall. “It’s in a tiny vial, bright blue.” Kady ran over and pulled out a small wooden case filled with tiny two inch bottles holding a creamy turquoise substance inside. “It’s nectar from the ragon flower. It’ll give him quite a jolt too, wakes anything right up - I also use it for those that have problems breathing in the spring.”

“That’s adrenaline, this will work,” Kady grinned, not believing their luck. “Fucking Fillory.”

“Don’t we need needles and syringes and shit?” Penny asked, not wanting to rain on their parade but it felt kind of important.

“Oh no, it’s absorbed through the skin. Very potent, so wear my gloves dear,” Sybil said, nodding again to her work bench and Kady handed the gloves to Penny. She was the one who knew CPR, so he was in charge of the adrenaline administration. “Okay, we need to do this before the lightning mud dries out.” It was already beginning to crack on her hands, but the electricity still crackled ferociously. She rubbed her hands together again, and hovered them over the new body’s chest. “One, two, three.”

What followed happened so fast. Eliot would remember it for the rest of his life, his heart in his throat and his lungs stretched tight beneath his ribs as they went through motion after motion without pause. A life or death situation where death was the starting point would forever be ingrained in all of them.

The whole body jolted when Sybil placed her palms on its chest, rising off the table an inch or two and crashing back down. Kady checked for a pulse, found nothing and shook her head, so Sybil touched him again. The body jumped, and Kady put her fingers to the pulse point by the throat. She let out a breath she hadn’t even known she’d been holding. “No pulse, but I think he’s in V-fib. Penny, dose him. El, you and I are tag-teaming CPR.” With Kady’s instruction, Eliot counted quick compressions on Quentin’s chest - smudging the spellwork there as he did so, while Kady breathed air into the lungs of the new body. Done the wrong way the air could have ended up in his stomach. They did five rounds of compressions, and Kady checked for a pulse again. “Shock him again.”

Everyone cleared the table and the witch shocked the body, followed by Kady checking the pulse point. A smile tore across her face, and bright eyes locked with Eliot’s on the other side of the table. “We’ve got a pulse, the heart is beating on its own.” She leaned over and hovered her ear over the body’s mouth, resting a hand in the center of the chest to check for movement, and even Eliot could see her hand rise and fall. “And it’s breathing. His body is breathing.” 

Sybil smiled, content with the success and impressed with their methods. “You just brought a dead body back to life.”

“Frankenstein's got nothing on us,” Kady agreed, and fist bumped both Penny and Eliot over the table. But they had no time to celebrate.

“Alright, we’re moving quickly next,” Sybil said, spinning around to dunk her hands in a waiting wooden pail full of water and rose petals, her hands sizzling like hot irons as the lightning mud was washed away. “Get his spirit jar and prepare to unseal it on my say so. We need to close off the cabin so it can’t escape if it doesn’t latch to the body.” Eliot didn’t want to think about that possibility, couldn’t afford to, so he scooped up the golden urn and held it in his arms to await instructions.

“You’re not closing up jack shit until we’re inside!” 

Margo burst through the half-open door, almost running as she did so, followed closely by Julia and Alice. They looked like they’d run the entire way from the coastline, and nightfall was finally covering the sky in dark blues and purples - just as Novik the horse had predicted. Eliot thought the horse was just being an asshole to him when they’d said it - but apparently it weaved truth and insults together better than he did. Margo ran straight to Eliot and he wrapped her up in one arm, not caring that she was sweaty and hot as a sauna. He didn’t even get to tell her how happy he was she made it, only going so far as to press a kiss to the top of her head, when she looked over and froze in surprise. “Holy shit, it looks just like him.”

“Well yes, that’s kind of the point, Bambi,” Eliot drawled, earning himself a pinch to the side that smarted way more than it should have. 

“He’s breathing,” Alice pointed out, hovering over the body and inspecting it carefully. Julia watched from where Kady had her arms wrapped around her, and carefully untangled herself with a kiss to the woman’s lips so she could move closer to the body as well. 

“And his heart is beating,” Julia added with a smile, inspecting it in a way that looked as if she could see beneath the skin. “We made it just in time.”

“Indeed you did,” Sybil informed them, announcing her presence to the newcomers. “Any more expected? Or shall we begin?”

“I can seal the cottage,” Alice said, stepping away from Quentin’s body without being able to tear her eyes away from it. “So you can do your spell.” She cast with quick, decisive movements that were well used and close to muscle memory in their familiarity. A silver film expanded from her steepled fingers, swift and large like a life-raft, covering the whole room wall to wall in seconds. Again, Sybil nodded her head sagely. The young Magicians did have impressive methods.

“You all might put me out of business if you ever set your minds to it,” she said absently, not revealing if she was serious or teasing. 

“Don’t worry about that, you’ve got the corner market on magic for hire,” Margo told her. “We plan on sticking to ruling the kingdom and getting wrapped up in quests we want nothing to fucking do with.”

“Amen,” Eliot mumbled, still holding Margo to his chest along with the urn. 

The forest witch did chuckle at that, and moved about the table to begin her spell. More mud tracing, this time on the body’s face and forehead, with intricate movements of her hands and fingers as she did so. The Magicians glanced around at each other as she worked, not sure if they should reveal to the Fillorian that what she was doing was casting in long division. Using the mud as a conductor to help slow her movements down and hold the positions as she wove more spell formations around them. Alice, in particular, watched with rapt attention at the technique. Magic, in some form, existed in every realm - the same as science did - and it was fascinating to see the different ways it presented itself each time. 

“Alright,” Sybil exhaled slowly, tying off her spell and raising her hands by her sides as if just completing a masterpiece. “Unseal the spirit jar. And pray, if it helps you.”

Unraveling himself from the comforting grip of his best friend, Eliot placed the spirit jar on the edge of the table near the new body’s head. He remembered the spell better than his own name, after repeating it to himself over and over again for days, but it still took him a moment to raise his hands in casting. It was a simple three position spell, he could have done it in his sleep. With a final deep breath, he shifted through Popper 26 and 97, then all the way back down to the OG 03, and the jar lid opened with a hiss like an ancient tomb. For one, heart-stopping minute, nothing happened - and Eliot feared the worst. His heart hit his shoes, and all hope drained from him.

Then the golden urn exploded. 

The lid snapped back, and the whirlwind from before spun out of control. There was no color or shapes this time, for Quentin wasn’t attached to anything in the realm of the living, and the wind hit every wall of the hut in a burst of desperation. Of confusion. Not knowing where it was or which way to go. 

Everyone shot back from the table, some hitting the walls and Eliot almost tripping over the arm chair behind him. No one was sure what would happen if the spirit wind hit them, or ghosted through them, but the also backed off to make the new body shine like a beacon. Eliot couldn’t even breathe as he waited for the spirit wind to find the body, biting his tongue until he tasted blood and not even blinking. _Come on, Q. Focus. It’s right there._

As if it had heard him, the wind died down for a moment, a living thing regaining it’s bearings, and it noticed the body. It dove for the spell map drawn across the body’s face, the wind disappearing into it without a trace, the only indication it entered was the rising of the chest. Filling the lungs. Then it was gone, and the body’s lips snapped shut, followed by deafening silence. The body breathed, exhaling, and none of the spirit wind exited. 

Margo looked to Eliot, who couldn’t even look at her, then to Alice who also glanced around at everyone in the room. They couldn’t tell what they were waiting for. How would they know that Quentin’s soul accepted the body, or if it was rejecting it as they stood there in the quiet? 

The body began to breathe faster, hitching as it did.

Then faster, and faster until went so rapid it tipped over the point of _too_ much and began to hyperventilate. Gasping like it couldn’t catch an oxygen, the pulse in it’s throat thrumming like a hummingbird, hands twitching and close to seizing. Eliot’s heart was in his throat, his hands raised to tug at his hair painfully, his eyes burned and he couldn’t fucking breathe. It was rejecting the soul, the body wouldn’t accept Quentin, he’d fucking failed - he should have helped Quentin when he had the chance in the Mirror World. He should have tried harder to help him find his reason for living. It should have been Julia or Alice or _anyone else_ to help lead him back, to give him this second chance. Now, he’d never finish his quest, and the world would fall apart around them - and Eliot wouldn’t even care, because Quentin had trusted him and he’d fucking _failed_.

“Someone fucking do something!” Margo snapped at the group, not moving because she herself didn’t know what to do, but they could all feel the whole ordeal slipping away like water through their fingers.

With a determined set to her mouth, Kady stepped up to the table and slapped Quentin across the face. Hard. So hard it jerked his head to the side and slammed the opposite cheek into the table.

His hyperventilating ceased, as did his breathing altogether, but his eyes snapped open. All in an instant. His eyes didn’t focus, but they were clear, the same color of dark brown that made them look so deep from afar. He didn’t even blink, but he also didn’t draw breath again.

Margo stared so intently she didn’t blink either, watching for any signs of life, then looked up to Kady sharply. “Hit him again.” 

She did just that, after a moment’s hesitation - not out of apprehension, but consideration. This time she brought her fist down square in the middle of his chest, and the body wheezed in a breath, his body curling up and awakening his limbs. His fingers, his nerve endings, and his breathing came back to him. Still a little quick, but also dragging as he forced himself to repeat it over and over again. His eyes moved, staring at the ceiling and looking around him as best he could. No one came closer to help him, not wanting to interfere with the process - afraid to mess it up, whatever part of the pairing spell was still left. With a struggling sound in his throat, he lifted himself into a half sitting position, resting on the one elbow he managed to move back as a crutch, and his distant eyes scrambled for something to latch onto. 

Nobody spoke, or dared to move, as the animated body moved about and found it’s bearings. They still didn’t know if the soul had taken, what rejection could still happen. 

And then the body’s eyes adjusted on the person at the foot of the table. It was Penny with his arms crossed and eyes a little wider than normal, still as a statue, but he sounded just like his old self when he finally shattered the silence around them. “Well?” Penny asked, both the room and the body on the table.

It heaved another breath, slowly blinked for the first time, and spoke. 

“What did I miss?” Quentin asked.

The collective relief in the room broke through the tension with overwhelming clarity, the smothering anticipation clearing like fog. Quentin had moved his other elbow behind him to lift his head higher, all in vain, as Julia launcher herself at him and hugged him around the neck so tightly he had even _more_ trouble breathing with his new (slightly dirt caked) lungs. His back hit the table again, and he moved his one good arm to hold on to her just as tightly. She was crying and laughing, and kissing his face, and soon everyone else was sighing or laughing in relief as well. Aice had her hand over her mouth, glasses fogging up and a smile splitting her face. Kady exhaled so heavily it moved her chest and shoulders, a look of repose softening the features until she too smiled in utter disbelief that they actually pulled it off.

“Welcome back, Q,” Margo told him, pushing his hair out of his face and catching his attention to give her one of her secret smiles once more. Only he could see the way her eyes glistened when he looked up at her.

Eliot near collapsed. He sagged against the table, knees hitting the floor so he could take Quentin’s hand and kissing the knuckles softly before laying his head down - exhausted and choking on tears but smiling so wide it eased every tense muscle and ache in his whole body. In his heart and tired soul. He pressed the back of Quentin’s hand to his cheek and closed his eyes, content in knowing he’d done what he said he would do. 

Q was back with him, with them, and he was never letting go again. 

“...am I not wearing clothes?”

\--


End file.
